Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 104: Not Many Laughs

Today if you watched a film with the word comedy in it you would expect a laugh out loud romp, not so in 1944 and that year's Best Story Winner - The Human Comedy. The film deals with the adventures of the Macaulay family during World War II primarily focusing on the middle son Homer played by Mickey Rooney. I wasn't so sure about this film because of Rooney's previous performances in the two Spencer Tracey movies I'd seen him in, Captains Courageous and Boys Town, in which he'd either failed to make an impression or he'd gone over the top. However in The Human Comedy, in which he was nominated for Lead Actor, his wide-eyed innocence and over the top spirit were used well in the character of Homer. Despite the war raging and his brother fighting in battle he keeps a bright expression as he helps out his mother and goes to work at the telegram station. His relationship with the two other men he works with, Frank Morgan's Willie Grogan and James Craig's Tom Spangler, form some of the film's better scenes forming almost a surrogate family as the two men take the place of the father Homer has lost and the brother who is away. We also see the older brother, Marcus, at war conversing with a friend Tobey and reminiscing about how much he misses his hometown of Ithaca. While the youngest brother Ulysses is always seemingly getting into mischief but then he only seems to be about four. The whole thing is narrated by the deceased father of the Macaulay clan as he looks over to see that his family are alright.

Obviously shot and shown during the war this film would've been seen by people who were missing their loved ones while they were away fighting and it obviously gave them hope. There are some nice little scenes here including Spangler finding love and Rooney gaining the approval of his stern school mistress. However there are also some missteps for one part there is far too much singing and there is also a segment that lasts about ten minutes in which Ulysses and other boys from the town go to steal some apricots from an apricot tree, I'm sure this is what happened regularly in that neighbourhood but we still really don't need to see a blow by blow account of fruit theft. The end of the film is quite sad, but I suppose that's the point, things never go exactly as we plan them and if this set out to portray an accurate account of what life was like for families in the early 1940s in small town America then I think it did a good job and Rooney's performance in the last couple of scenes were deserving of his nomination, the film itself lost out to the far superior Casablanca but I think it was more than deserving of a place in that year's top 10 list.