TCM Pick O’ The Day: Monday, January 19th
by John Nolte
8:45am PST – The Human Comedy (1943) – A small-town telegraph boy deals with the strains of growing up during World War II. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan, James Craig, Marsha Hunt Dir: Clarence Brown BW-117 mins, TV-PG
The camera floats high above a small, idyllic American town as our deceased narrator reflects on his life:
I am Matthew Macauley. I have been dead for two years. So much of me is still living that I know now the end is only the beginning. As I look down on my homeland of Ithaca, California, with its cactus, vineyards and orchards, I see that so much of me is still living there – in the places I’ve been, in the fields and streets and church and most of all in my home, where my hopes, my dreams, my ambitions still live in the daily life of my loved ones.
This is not “American Beauty.”
MGM’s “The Human Comedy” is an all but forgotten American masterpiece (a word not used lightly here) about how the Macauley family of Ithaca, California kept their faith in America, God and each other while enduring the hardships and tragedies of World War II.
Writer William Saroyan won an Academy Award for his story and Mickey Rooney a Best Lead Actor nomination for his exquisite work in this moving and richly detailed mood piece. Director Clarence Brown doesn’t tell a story, he creates a series of subplots from unforgettable vignettes all wrapped in the theme of home and how we are all, regardless of race, color, financial status or creed, Americans.
“The Human Comedy” is the opposite of the cancer of multi-culturalism and class warfare, whose goal are to divide and breed resentment. This film respects our differences but celebrates not only our similarities, but the miracle of the American melting pot and why the “idea” of America is worth fighting, dying – and worst of all – losing someone you love for.
Rooney plays Homer Macauley. Still in high school but with his father two years dead and his older brother Marcus (Van Johnson) in the army, he’s the man of the house working nights as a telegram delivery boy. The telegram is how the War Department “regrets to inform you” and young Homer will come of age younger than he should have to.
Homer’s younger brother is Ulysses, directed to subtle, adorable perfection by Jackie “Butch” Jenkins. As Homer’s forced into adulthood and Marcus awaits combat deployment to the front lines, Ulysses discovers the wonders of life in the form of gophers, libraries, a black man on a train singing about going home and the forbidden thrill of stealing apricots from an old man who looks forward to the thievery as much as the thieves.
They will write off this cinematic poem (reportedly studio head Louis B. Mayer’s favorite) as corny, syrupy, sappy, and jingoistic, but those are the code words used to dismiss and marginalize that which ennobles self-sacrifice and brings us closer to God, country, family and each other.
Nihilism is lazy.
Irony is shallow.
Quirky is irony gone retarded.
“The Human Comedy” is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece not available on home video.
Don’t miss it.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
23 Comments
Is it me, or does the uniformed lad in the background look like Wayne from The Wonder Years?
This man, black and different from all the others, waved back to Ulysses, shouting: “Going home, boy–going back where I belong!”
The small boy and the negro waved to one another until the train was almost out of sight.
Yes.
And is that the communist-sympathizer Marsha Hunt in the front row?
Just read her bio at IMDB, and though they are left leaning, sounds like she got caught up in the guilt by association, and was not a bigtime subversive like Trumbo.
Speaking of subversive, pretensious egotists, Bobby Redford is talking about taking Sundance to the Middle East; any chance we can get them to keep him?
Hard for him to make his overly-long pictures with long pans of nature when all you have around you is sand…..
Thanks for the heads up. Never seen the movie, but one of my favorite books when I was a lad.
This is a remarkable and emotionally powerful movie, especially due to Rooney’s performance and good writing. And although I have a problem with some of its theology (a most unorthodox, squishy Christianity), what I remember most is the scene on the train where the soilders break out singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” It moved me very deeply.
Great review, John. I’m so glad to know I’m not the only one who loves this movie. This is Mickey Rooney’s best dramatic performance, but there are lots of great performances here (as well as a quick walk-through by Robert Mitchum.) The screenplay just melts your heart. Outstanding from beginning to end.
This movie is exactly the type of movie Mayer loved and the type that Schary was brought in not to make.
I always wonder what it was like to watch this when it came out during the war. In 1943 Americans did not know how long it would take to win in Europe and the Pacific. The invasion of Sicily took place in 1943 with more American and British deaths in that one operation than the U.S. has lost in almost 6 years in Iraq. Yet make a movie like this today and you’re called a tool of neoconservatives.
I’m going to watch GLENN BECK and HOUSE.
John, I want you to know your TCM Pick posts are the first thing I look at each day. My television rarely leaves Dishnet Channel 132. I am too young to remember any movies from the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and most of the 60’s, but I have fallen in love with them over the past few years.
It’s true when they say, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
————————————————————–
“Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.” – John Wayne
————————————————————–
There’s something kind of Truman Show-ish about this constant invocation of rather bland films from the 1940’s as being the American ideal.
I’m not sure why exactly some cultural conservatives are so obsessed with an American past that never actually existed in the way they remember it.
Lodo, meet Tito.
Tito, meet Lodo.
Wow! What a movie! This is the first time I’ve heard of it, and by your recommendation, I have been watching it. I love it and hope that it will be out on DVD before long.
Wow! This film was a shot of patriotism I really needed! Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, this story echos the promises made to us and for the most part, how we lived.
You must be logged in to post a comment.