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.
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