Eugene O’Neill, the playwright, was known for his psychologically dark and depressing tragedies that dwelt on alcoholism, drug addiction and family dysfunction.\u00a0 But he did write one comedy which was sort of an attempt at autobiography (sort of).<\/p>\n
And that was \u201cAh, Wilderness!\u201d\u00a0 Eventually this play was translated into a motion picture starring Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and even a very young Mickey Rooney.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the story of a family; the Millers, living in a small New England town in 1906.\u00a0 Barrymore is the family patriarch Nat and his wife Essie is played by the always amusing Spring Byington.\u00a0 Their youngest son Tommy is played by Micky Rooney.\u00a0 Beery plays Nat\u2019s drunken and lazy brother Sid who works as a \u201creporter\u201d on Nat\u2019s town newspaper.\u00a0 The rest of the children are played by relative unknowns but in general, the acting and direction is quite good.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/p>\n
The event of the movie is the graduation from high school of the next to oldest son Richard.\u00a0 He\u2019s the class valedictorian and an \u201cintellectual\u201d whose reading of modernist fiction, poetry and political thought gets him into trouble with his parents and his girlfriend\u2019s father.\u00a0 Swinburne, G.B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx provide Richard with plenty of quotes to rankle his elders.\u00a0 But when Muriel McComber\u2019s father Dave finds a Swinburne poem among his daughter\u2019s effects he orders her to break off her romance with Richard and pulls his advertisement from Nat\u2019s newspaper.<\/p>\n
To get back at the world Richard goes out with one of his older brother\u2019s friends to a saloon and gets drunk and fraternizes with a chorus girl who sits on his lap and soaks him for drinks and some money.\u00a0 After he gets thrown out by the bartender for being underaged he show up home drunk and depressed much to his family\u2019s chagrin.\u00a0 The end of the movie revolves around Nat explaining the facts of life with respect to women and living a decent life to his son.\u00a0 Of course, Richard and Muriel re-unite and even her father comes around to approving of their romance.<\/p>\n
In between Richard\u2019s problems we\u2019re witness to the drunken escapades of Nat\u2019s brother Sid (played by Wallace Beery) and his on-again, off-again courtship of Lily Davis who must be Mrs. Miller\u2019s cousin.\u00a0 Beery performs a very over-the-top rendition of his drunken oaf character and Lily seems to take solace from chastising Sid for his drinking and career failures.<\/p>\n
Alright, so why do I like this movie?\u00a0 Many of the exterior shots of the small town were filmed in Grafton, MA.\u00a0 And remarkably the town still looks surprisingly the same after almost a hundred years.\u00a0 I know the area very well from an earlier phase of my life in New England and find these views of the town incredibly nostalgic.\u00a0 So that\u2019s one thing the movie has going for it (admittedly a highly specific point with a very small audience of appreciation).\u00a0 The other virtue the movie possesses is the charm of a small town from the very dawn of the twentieth century.\u00a0 There\u2019s a simplicity to the activities that still has an attraction to some of us looking back from the awful alienated place we find ourselves in today.\u00a0 There\u2019s a five-minute scene of the children shooting off fire works on Fourth of July morning that brings me back over sixty years to my childhood.\u00a0 And the awfulness of the high school graduation talent-show-scene makes me laugh for its similarity to some of the shows I have attended.\u00a0 There\u2019s just a thick slice of good-natured old Americana that cheers my heart.\u00a0 So, who is this movie for?\u00a0 Probably just me, unless what you read here piques your curiosity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eugene O’Neill, the playwright, was known for his psychologically dark and depressing tragedies that dwelt on alcoholism, drug addiction and family dysfunction.\u00a0 But he did<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[5121,2290,5120,2010,332],"class_list":["post-35804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-eugene-oneill","tag-grafton-ma","tag-lionel-barrymore","tag-mickey-rooney","tag-wallace-beery"],"yoast_head":"\n