city of saints
by Douglas Messerli
Howard
Estabrook (screenplay, based on a script by William Saroyan), Clarence Brown
(director) The Human Comedy / 1943
Although
it is usually reported that Brown’s film, The
Human Comedy, was based on a novel by playwright and novelist William
Saroyan, in fact the movie was based on a script penned by Saroyan, which, when
Leo Mayer and others read it seemed too long and, perhaps, more socially
critical than they wanted the story to be. Consequently, they paid off Saroyan,
calling in Estabrook to rewrite the screenplay. Saroyan, furious with the re-adaption,
quickly turned the script into a novel, which was published in conjunction with
the film’s release, the film helping to make the novel a bestseller, and the
novel helping to promote the far more sentimental movie version.
Certainly the film is quite loveable. How
could a film with the nearly always likeable—at least as a child actor
(although he was a 23 year old adult at the time of filming)—Mickey Rooney as
Homer Macauley, Fay Bainter as his mother, Ray Collins as his dead father, Van
Johnson as his older brother Marcus, and the adorable Jack Jenkins as his young
brother Ulysses be anything but charming? With a cast rounded out by the
veteran Frank Morgan, Donna Reed, John Craven, and James Craig, the film, true
to many of Brown’s productions, is absolutely brimming with Hollywood flesh.
Even the walk-ons, in the form of three soldiers (Robert Mitchum, Don DeFore
and Barry Nelson), and the young extras, which include Darryl Hickman as
Lionel, pull their weight. This rambling sampling of American culture, of its
basic goodness and superficial flaws, accordingly turn it almost into a
mini-spectacular. Love strikes young and older figures, travails appear with a
paced regularity, and the joys of living in small-town America are trumpeted
throughout. How could anyone not like this film?
There are also some wonderful moments of
Hardy-boy-like treasures: a scene in which terrified children attempt to raid
an apricot tree, carefully overseen, with secret joyfulness, by its elderly
owner; a beautiful dinner scene in which the down-to-earth telegrapher, Tom
Splanger, suddenly discovers that family and friends of his wealthy
girl-friend, Diana Steed, are fairly ordinary and friendly after all; Ulysses’
wonderment of the world, from gophers to trains, and his attempt to understand
concepts such as fear and “leaving home”: and, finally, Homer’s gradual discovery
of a world of sorry and happiness far removed from the simple joys of home.
Although the lovely Fay Bainter is asked, at times, to deliver her homilies about life and death as if standing before a pulpit, her soft and
careworn motherly voice convinces us of her wisdom. All right, she also plays a
harp, along with the piano accompaniment of her beautiful daughter and Marcus’
equally lovely girlfriend, Mary (Dorothy Morris) that might have been painted
by John La Farge in the fin de siècle! And brother Marcus entertains his
soldier friends on a hand accordion. So too did one of Judy Garland’s friend’s
bring a trumpet to her Meet Me in St.
Louis party, and she and her sister sang around the piano with just as much
posturing sentiment only a year later! Sentiment can always be allowed in a
world fraught by major changes such as the transition of a culture into a new
century and a country in the midst of war.
Harder by far to swallow are the
tear-jerking scenes in which the sometimes mischievous Homer is protectively
scolded by his teacher, only to be cheered on by her to win his high-hurdle race.
Although there is something of sacred wonder in Ulyssses’ and his friend
Lionel’s awe of the library full of incomprehensible (neither can yet read)
books, the scene, nicely shot by Brown from their child-like perspective, it is
just too extended and downright corny to be effective. This Ithaca, California
indeed may be filled with American immigrants from all over the world, but do
we really need to watch them all decked out in their home-country attire
dancing in the woods? This seems too much like American boosterism.*
And then there is the ghost of the
Maccauley family father popping up now and then to invisibly kiss his wife upon
her head and further narrate a story that is already overly narratively driven!
Although the relationship between Homer
and the elderly--a concept which seems almost funny today, since the man is only 67--and
alcoholic telegraph receiver, at moments, is extremely touching, his sudden
death in Homer’s arms at the very moment that the young man sees the telegraph
declaring his brother’s death almost turns the frieze into bathos. Fortunately,
Rooney plays the scene out in near complete silence, signifying the tragedy of
the “double whammy” he has just received.
Finally, how to truly explain the deep and
loving friendship that arises between Marcus and his fellow soldier, the
orphaned Tobey George? Of course, we all know that in times of war, deep
friendships between soldiers develop out of their fears and distress. But this
“friend” becomes more than a friend, creating a kind of loving bond between
them that turns Tobey into a near adoptee (which Freudians might even describe
as a kind of symbolic marriage) protected by Marcus’ adoring gaze. Such bonding
between males was also central to Brown’s early silent film, Flesh and the Devil, and even, one might
argue, in the relationship between Lucas Beauchamp and the young boy in Intruder in the Dust.
Marcus’ love of Ithaca and all that it
contains becomes Tobey’s love of the same—to him unknown—ideal. And when Marcus
dies and Tobey returns to Ithaca, we can only wince at the implications. With
tears dripping from our empathic eyes, we watch the despairing Homer—terrified
by having to again present news of which he does not want to be the bearer—invite
the crippled newcomer into the house, presumably to explain that Tobey will now
stand in Marcus’ place. Will Tobey marry Marcus’ sister Bess or his fiancée?
And, in marrying Bess, will he be replacing Marcus in what is a nearly
incestuous relationship? Such issues, even subliminally, are a bit hard to
swallow in a world where everyone has been portrayed as a saint. Perhaps if
only the movie had just mussed up its characters a little bit, allowing them to
be real humans, we might have allowed such questions to slip off into the comic
night.
*I
do admit, as a young man in the 1960s, I have witnessed just such a festival of
cultural diversity in downtown Milwaukee, each immigrant group representing
their costumes and their native dances.
Los Angeles,
April 14, 2014
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