Knowing the reputation this film has, I really wanted to like it. It has a great cast, a top-rank director, one of the best writers in American literature, and came out of the classiest studio in Hollywood. With all that going for it, I really should have liked this movie. I didn't.
The acting is first-rate, especially by Mickey Rooney. Even James Craig, who was a second- (or even third-) string Clark Gable at MGM, did a commendable job. It's very smoothly directed by Clarence Brown, it's beautifully photographed--it's just so damn hokey. I understand that it was a propaganda piece meant to lift up home-front morale during the war, and it has to be looked at in that light, but it dates so badly as to make it almost unwatchable. Maybe people acted that way in 1943 (or MGM wanted people to think so, anyway), but it has this unreal, almost Wizard-of-Oz quality to it so that you can't really identify with or relate to any of the characters. Rooney almost makes it work--it's probably one of the two or three best performances in his career--but the film's frankly unreal atmosphere finally defeats it.
I know people who get absolutely rhapsodic over this movie. I think that's because it evokes a Norman Rockwell period of American history that really didn't exist even during Rockwell's time. It's the way people would like things to have been, rather than the way they actually were. That may make for a nice Hallmark Christmas card, but it doesn't necessarily translate into a good movie, and unfortunately this one isn't. I wish I could have liked it more than I did, but it just didn't cut it.
The acting is first-rate, especially by Mickey Rooney. Even James Craig, who was a second- (or even third-) string Clark Gable at MGM, did a commendable job. It's very smoothly directed by Clarence Brown, it's beautifully photographed--it's just so damn hokey. I understand that it was a propaganda piece meant to lift up home-front morale during the war, and it has to be looked at in that light, but it dates so badly as to make it almost unwatchable. Maybe people acted that way in 1943 (or MGM wanted people to think so, anyway), but it has this unreal, almost Wizard-of-Oz quality to it so that you can't really identify with or relate to any of the characters. Rooney almost makes it work--it's probably one of the two or three best performances in his career--but the film's frankly unreal atmosphere finally defeats it.
I know people who get absolutely rhapsodic over this movie. I think that's because it evokes a Norman Rockwell period of American history that really didn't exist even during Rockwell's time. It's the way people would like things to have been, rather than the way they actually were. That may make for a nice Hallmark Christmas card, but it doesn't necessarily translate into a good movie, and unfortunately this one isn't. I wish I could have liked it more than I did, but it just didn't cut it.