I felt compelled to click the "Contains spoiler" box for a story about Alexander Graham Bell, the "spoiler" being that he invented the telephone. What does that tell us about the end of civilization as we know it?
Actually, this is an engaging movie, although I believed only certain features of its presentation. Alexander Graham Bell was born. He invented the telephone. He died. Of those points I'm sure. I guess his wife was deaf and Bell himself, a Scot by birth, was preceded by two generations of writers interested in the mechanics of speech and associated pathologies. And we know he had an assistant named Watson, Henry Fonda here, because of that famous first voice transmission -- "Watson, come here. I need you." I'm doubtful that it was caused by Bell's having spilled sulfuric acid on his leg. It's true, too, that the success of the device was boosted when it was adopted in the palace of Queen Victoria, or so I was taught years ago in an anthropology course on culture change and innovation.
But all that doesn't amount to much. The film is an entertaining piece of semi-educational family fare. Bell and Watson suffer through hard times together, punctuated by occasional breakthroughs or epiphanies, usually followed by more hard times. As Watson, Henry Fonda adds some necessary common-sensical and often softly funny observations about the lives they're leading. Too bad he more or less disappears from the movie about half way through, like Lear's fool.
But it's Boston in 1875 and we see the obsessive Bell making his way through a light snow fall of cornflakes while children throw snowballs at him, a lamplighter lights a lamp, screaming children ride sleds along the sidewalks embanked by fake snow, and horses and carriage jingle their way down the studio streets. There are Christmas carols and mute children who learn to say "father", and Christmas dinners and presents, and a love interest in the appealing form of Loretta Young.
There's something winning about these old-fashioned studio productions. In this case, the studio was 20th-Century Fox and the producer was Daryl Zanuck, renowned for his ability to polish a script into a nicely structured, well-written, and thoroughly commercial form, and for being a Goy from Wahoo, Nebraska. I love the fake snow and the teary children and the determined scientist distracted by love and the need for money. Even if you don't believe a word of it, it's still a comforting experience.
Don Ameche approaches his role with the innocent hyperbolic enthusiasm of a child. Fonda seems sleepy and is all legs, like young Mister Lincoln. Loretta Young has calf-like eyes and a sweet smile and is so demure that she manages to suggest barely repressed volcanic passions. The supporting cast are mostly familiar -- Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart, and Spring Byington -- and they turn in professional performances.
The climactic courtroom battle is something of a let down. Poor Bell was the victim of innovational inevitability. The telephone was just one example of an endless list of simultaneous discoveries and inventions. I can only think of the gasoline-powered car, oxygen, radar, and the jet engine at the moment. In a way, culture advances in accordance with its own schedule and the inventors and discoverers acclaimed as genius's are its instruments, people who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right temperament. If I can dig up that list of simultaneous inventions I'll post it on the message board.
Anyway, a routine but likable biography from the old studio system, now thoroughly defunct.
Actually, this is an engaging movie, although I believed only certain features of its presentation. Alexander Graham Bell was born. He invented the telephone. He died. Of those points I'm sure. I guess his wife was deaf and Bell himself, a Scot by birth, was preceded by two generations of writers interested in the mechanics of speech and associated pathologies. And we know he had an assistant named Watson, Henry Fonda here, because of that famous first voice transmission -- "Watson, come here. I need you." I'm doubtful that it was caused by Bell's having spilled sulfuric acid on his leg. It's true, too, that the success of the device was boosted when it was adopted in the palace of Queen Victoria, or so I was taught years ago in an anthropology course on culture change and innovation.
But all that doesn't amount to much. The film is an entertaining piece of semi-educational family fare. Bell and Watson suffer through hard times together, punctuated by occasional breakthroughs or epiphanies, usually followed by more hard times. As Watson, Henry Fonda adds some necessary common-sensical and often softly funny observations about the lives they're leading. Too bad he more or less disappears from the movie about half way through, like Lear's fool.
But it's Boston in 1875 and we see the obsessive Bell making his way through a light snow fall of cornflakes while children throw snowballs at him, a lamplighter lights a lamp, screaming children ride sleds along the sidewalks embanked by fake snow, and horses and carriage jingle their way down the studio streets. There are Christmas carols and mute children who learn to say "father", and Christmas dinners and presents, and a love interest in the appealing form of Loretta Young.
There's something winning about these old-fashioned studio productions. In this case, the studio was 20th-Century Fox and the producer was Daryl Zanuck, renowned for his ability to polish a script into a nicely structured, well-written, and thoroughly commercial form, and for being a Goy from Wahoo, Nebraska. I love the fake snow and the teary children and the determined scientist distracted by love and the need for money. Even if you don't believe a word of it, it's still a comforting experience.
Don Ameche approaches his role with the innocent hyperbolic enthusiasm of a child. Fonda seems sleepy and is all legs, like young Mister Lincoln. Loretta Young has calf-like eyes and a sweet smile and is so demure that she manages to suggest barely repressed volcanic passions. The supporting cast are mostly familiar -- Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart, and Spring Byington -- and they turn in professional performances.
The climactic courtroom battle is something of a let down. Poor Bell was the victim of innovational inevitability. The telephone was just one example of an endless list of simultaneous discoveries and inventions. I can only think of the gasoline-powered car, oxygen, radar, and the jet engine at the moment. In a way, culture advances in accordance with its own schedule and the inventors and discoverers acclaimed as genius's are its instruments, people who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right temperament. If I can dig up that list of simultaneous inventions I'll post it on the message board.
Anyway, a routine but likable biography from the old studio system, now thoroughly defunct.