The Human Comedy

Saw The Human Comedy (thanks, Paul!) It was a world war 2 propaganda film in a big way. It harps relentlessly on the virtues of religion, homeland, and motherhood. It's treacly and preachy but also fascinating as a historical artifact. It's interesting that they cannot say "pregnant" and that the family all kisses each other on the lips. The film stars Mickey Rooney as a kind of long-in-the-tooth high school student. His older brother is at war, his sister works at the red cross and lectures him for insufficient sanctimony when he prays before supper ("but what do the words mean?") His mother is a pillar of strength who uncomplainingly toils and who accompanies her own singing on an eight-foot harp. The whole thing is so antiseptically wholesome, even Pollyanna herself would have to step out for a cigarette.

There's a lot going on that can be traced back to the war effort. Plastic in women's clothing is on display (fabric was needed for the war.) The soldiers are of course saintly and behave like big boys (nice boys too, mind you. None of this angry PTSD nonsense.) An old man is encouraged to keep working "until he dies" if he wants to (with fewer people around, the abolition of mandatory retirement must have been a hot-button issue.) At a country fair, various ethnicities are approved of by our heroes. Curiously Armenians are specifically mentioned (was there an Armenian influx? What's the story here?) It is remarked that though they are all different, that they are "Americans all!" The connection to religion is given when one wise and ancient character tells Rooney that he must have faith that everything happens for a reason, that even if there's something he knows is wrong (like killing) that he maybe shouldn't be so sure.

That was the most interesting thing to me, cynically spotting the propaganda points, as well as guilelessly enjoying the melodrama. There's many scenes that leap straight for the emotional jugular. A woman crying over her lost son is briefly transformed into a young mother, singing over her child. A soldier singing a spiritual song shouts directly into the camera "C'mon! Everybody sing!" A gang of cute children are "scared off" of a kindly old man's land by his sudden appearance. The whole film is intermittently narrated by the ghost of the father of the family. Sometimes it's overly sentimental and you have to roll your eyes, but other times it pays off and you get a pleasant echo of something Thorton Wilder might have written.

The film has a lot of interesting fodder in it but ultimately lacks variety. There are no true antagonists (apart from one petty-tyrant coach) and the film has the tight-lipped, too-wide smile of someone who is fighting not to cry. The brave, bittersweet quality evokes better work. Also, although this throws off the winding-down-review tone I'm going for right now, there's this incredibly creepy orphan soldier who latches onto the older-brother-soldier's life story and begins to imagine it is his own. This is really, really weird and seems like a plot line incongruously lifted from a horror film. An interesting movie, if fairly preachy.