Ah, Wilderness!

"It seems as if we are surrounded by love" says Barrymore's genial patriarch at the end of this movie. To this viewer at least, the line has perhaps acquired an unintended irony as we contemplate the dulling nature of that ‘love'. O'Neill's work, which originally made gentle mockery of small town middle American taste and values, has perhaps unfortunately, these days gained an uncalled-for 'satiric' edge. The charm and skill of the original vision, captured by the craftsman-like direction of Brown, remains the same. What's happened is that the mildly eccentric, extended Miller family - one for instance in which Swinburne is considered shocking, and radicalism is half digested by callow youths (and then abruptly discarded) now appears stultifying, and we can too easily over compensate by allowing it the hues of a parody. Otherwise it takes a stupendous suspension of disbelief by today's viewer to accept the Millers on their own terms, apple pie and all, which is a shame.

A very young Mickey Rooney has a few scenes but is rarely allowed to really shine. This sort of role was no doubt good grounding for the enormously successful Andy Hardy series that lay ahead.

Wallace Beery, as Sid Miller, provides the most entertaining scenes in the film as he plays out another characteristically ungainly and comic romance, one typical of his screen roles. (Although he is given top billing, his screen presence is less sustained and more integrated than you'd expect.) Particularly memorable is the evening meal scene where he returns home drunk, and the family are gathered around the table to enjoy his antics. Even Lily, the woman who has consistently refused his repeated proposals through her distaste of his drunkenness, laughs at his comic behaviour. In this sense Beery provides a degree of liberation. The family is relaxed and draws together around the light of Beery's unthreatening inebriation. Some of his interior scenes remind one of W C Fields' work in The Bank Dick and It's a Gift, where he deconstructs the pretensions of middle class America with an anarchic sharpness that speaks to us much more directly today.

All in all it's a shame that the focus of the film is more on the young son Richard, whose unsteady standing on the border of manhood is never that enthralling. After a while his foibles and self-absorption become somewhat cloying, and one longs for Beery to reappear so that the fun can recommence. If Richard's on-off romance (and eventual drunkenness) is intended to parallel Sid's, then the comparison is very much to his detriment. Whilst Sid's romance seems important and meaningful, the son's is slow and irritates the modern viewer by the degree of feyness.

In short, an entertaining enough film, full of strong performances, but one which needs a dose of modern salt to make it just that little bit more palatable.

Eugene O'Neill wrote only one comedy, and this screen version of it is delightful. It treats some of the same problems as his tragedies, like alcoholism, but treats them lightly and with compassion. The cast is great. I especially like Lionel Barrymore as the father, Wallace Beery as Sid, and Aline MacMahon as Lily--but Mickey Rooney as the little brother dominates every scene he is in. My favorite scene is where the family is at dinner and Uncle Sid comes home drunk. They are concerned for him but can't keep from laughing at the nutty things he says.

After seeing this movie, I bought a CD of the Broadway musical version, "Take Me Along," and a video of a Hollywood musical version, "Summer Holiday." This is such a great play, they can't do too many different versions of it.

(My brother-in-law - who doesn't even LIKE movies - liked "Ah, Wilderness!" when I showed it for him and my sister on a recent visit.)

Beautifully directed by Clarence Brown, the nearly perfect cast of this rare (but not quite *only*) O'Neill comedy shines from top to bottom even as one speculates the film this might have been had a Methodist minister not effectively murdered one of America's greatest entertainers over the minister's shallow objection to the depiction of a "fallen woman." He wrote to Will Rogers, who was touring in the George M. Cohan/Lionel Barrymore role of the father and slated to do this movie version, stating that he had had to leave the theatre with his daughter rather than expose her to such smut! Rogers prided himself on never doing "blue" material, and withdrew from the film in favor of that fatal trip to Alaska with Wiley Post; one suspects the unfortunate minister saw rather more than he liked of himself in Muriel's father, McComber, in the play, and that was the true source of his offense.

Starting with this film, many productions of AH, WILDERNESS! and the works based on it, like the Broadway musical TAKE ME ALONG, have top-billed the showier role of "Sid" (Wallace Beery) over the core role of the stabilizing force, the father (Lionel Barrymore), whose relationship with his son (Eric Linden) the play turns around. One wonders if it would have been that way had Rogers ignored blue nose objections and made the film, but it is hard to imagine a better performance than Barrymore gives in the role.

While recognizing the vast difference between the usual depth of O'Neill dramas and this warm remembrance of an idealized youth O'Neill might have imagined wanting in middle class Connecticut at the start of the 20th Century, students of the playwright must view this play (and film) next to his more obviously autobiographical masterpieces A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY... , MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN and the sea plays (filmed collectively as THE LONG VOYAGE HOME) for a complete understanding of the author.

The greatest regret in the film is the fresh, forceful performance from Eric Linden as Richard - the boy on the verge of manhood, struggling with the same essential sexual/social issues every young man struggles with, even if they may seem "quaint" and even shallow in this period telling (we only imagine it's somehow different because of the period specifics). It's a fine performance and one wonders what happened to the actor. He lived on to age 85, only passing in 1994, but never made the transition to "adult" leads and after the minor role of an Amputee in the 1939 blockbuster, GONE WITH THE WIND, only made one more minor film during WWII, and called it a career.

Nevertheless, glory in superb work from a balanced cast that showcases Spring Byington as the Mother, the wonderful character actress Aline MacMahon as Sid's love interest, Lily (seek her out as the Nurse in the superb "Play of the Week" filming of Judith Anderson in MEDEA in 1959 or as Ida in Judy Garland's final film, I COULD GO ON SINGING from 1963!) and Mickey Rooney as the almost too energetic younger brother Tommy.

Yes, Wallace Beery breaks Lily's heart (and ours) with his drunk scene played for laughs, but O'Neill knows whereof he's writing, and gives us a depth and subtext to these scenes which most comedies of the period or later "comedy drunk scenes" couldn't imagine, and lets us understand the deeper meaning even while we permit ourselves to smile at Beery & O'Neill's craft.

A last point to be made in appreciating this terrific production: made in "glorious black & white" (as the VHS release calls it), the studio set designers and director Brown took full advantage of the more detailed visual vocabulary monochrome offered and give us so detailed a portrait of the world the play is set in you could teach a master class on the style and technology of the period just from the beautifully observed physical portrait in this film.

Allow yourself a ninety eight minute excursion back to the turn of the last century - this is a trip to what was not quite the cultural wilderness some of us might suppose that you'll never regret taking.

Eugene O'Neill's gentle comedy about an American family living in a small town in 1906 shows us that our problems haven't changed, only the way we deal with them.

The story centers on Richard (Eric Linden) as he's about to graduate from high school. His summer is spent courting Muriel (Cecelia Parker) and planning to go to Yale in the fall. But he's restless without knowing why. His older brother (Frank Albertson) treats him like a kid, and his father (Lionel Barrymore) is having business troubles. And then there's drunken Uncle Sid (Wallace Beery) who breezes in and out of the house.

The mother (Spring Byington) is busy with the younger children (Mickey Rooney, Bonita Granville) and the spinster aunt (Aline MacMahon). Feeling alienated and alone, Richard goes to town with a friend (Edward Nugent) and gets mixed up with a woman from another city (Helen Flint) who's passing through town. Richard has his rite of passage and learns something important about himself.

Linden is excellent as the callow youth caught between adolescence and adulthood. His bravado shows itself in spouting poetry and speeches from plays. He's all talk. Beery gets top billing because of his box-office pull but plays a supporting role here. He's quite good as the boozy uncle who's sort of courting MacMahon (always good). Barrymore, Byington, Granville, Rooney, and Parker are solid.

But it's Helen Flint as Belle who nearly steals the film as the fast-talking city woman. She's excellent.

This film is a veritable treasure for those who appreciate small-town Americana at the turn of the century. Set in New England in 1906, we see the plethora of events typical of the era: the high school graduation with individual seniors singing, reciting poetry and the valedictorian speech; the Fourth of July celebration with fireworks and picnics; the careful relationships between the young boys and girls; the close-knit family life with a sister and brother of the parents living with them. I thoroughly enjoyed Clarence Brown's depiction of this lost innocent era, which produced a warm glow within me as I watched. There are very few belly laughs - one I remember was when the protagonist Eric Linden says to his not-so-clever girl (Cecilia Parker) "I was born 100 years before my time" and she responds "I was born 10 days before mine." But I found myself smiling often at the goings on. Eric Linden carries the film beautifully.

The rest of the cast is superb: Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington as Linden's parents; Mickey Rooney and Bonita Granville as his younger siblings; Aline MacMahon as Byinton's spinster sister and Wallace Beery as Barrymore's alcoholic brother. But I was particularly impressed with Helen Flint playing the vamp who Linden gets involved with when he was drowning his sorrows. The title, by the way, is a line from the poem "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám."