Vida de mi vida

Our Very Own starts out presenting the average American family picture that folks would later come to expect on such shows as Leave It To Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. Parents Jane Wyatt and Donald Cook have three beautiful daughters, Ann Blyth, Joan Evans, and Natalie Wood in descending order. It's a red letter day in the family with Ann's impending graduation from high school.

The girls have their usual teen problems including a nice little rivalry between Blyth and Evans for Farley Granger. But when Evans while looking for her own birth certificate finds Blyth's adoption papers, she uses them without measuring the consequences.

The film is nice family entertainment for the time and I have to say the sentiment is kept in check for this type of film. Our Very Own got an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Recording.

But the young leads Granger and Blyth are too old and look it to be playing teens. Granger was 25 and Blyth 22. On the other hand Joan Evans was 16 and Martin Milner 19 and the script has them a year younger than Granger and Blyth. There's also a great performance by Ann Dvorak as Blyth's birth mother.

Still Ann delivers a nice performance and it really would have been nice had they given her a song to sing, maybe at the climax which is the graduation.

This movie was made in 1949, just 4 years after the end of World War 2. It was a time when the average American family got to enjoy the post-war USA: Having Dad at home and not fighting a war , Mom at home instead of working in a factory making bombs , being able to buy gas anytime you wanted and having the thrill of seeing the what everyone wanted: a TV set in their home. It is with this backdrop, that one of the smaller studios, RKO, produced this wonderful and warm-hearted story of a young woman who discovers a secret kept from her since birth. It is not a typical story for it's time and that what makes it so different. It was written and directed with much care while dealing with a very sensitive subject. The major Hollywood Studios like MGM, Paramount, Warners, etc, still made all of the big-budget films, but RKO turned out some real good ones and Our Very Own is at the top of the list.

Behind the well-woven plot of a budding high school graduate's family problems is an earthy, though somewhat stereotypical examination of a Caucasion based, middle class existence in suburban America of 1949. Ann Blyth earnestly portrays the vicissitudinous impact of a revelation about her character's childhood. The storyline backdrop comes complete with proper but sincerely well meaning parents and a beloved, part-of-the-family, African-American housekeeper and cook (portrayed with gentility and grace by Jessica Grayson in her final film role) without whose valuable, understated contributions the family's daily routine would be reduced to chaos. Finally, of course, there's the obligatory family dog, playfully short-circuiting the household.

As depicted in this typical period film people dressed more formally, even in hot weather (for whatever reasons!), with air conditioning yet to permeate even modern, well equipped homes. As a rule, practical personal dress comfort didn't prevail over formality until the 1960's.

The prolonged initial sequence showcases a wonderful nuisance of a girl (scene-stealing Natalie Wood) "helping" with the installation of a new television, the up and coming electronic marvel of the day (whose commercial success was on the verge of becoming reality, thanks in part to some price breaking discoveries that soon rendered TV sets sufficiently affordable for the masses). Boys and girls were portraying themselves while being quietly groomed for achieving good citizenship standards as defined by the generally conservative post-war period.

In "Our Very Own" personal relationships expressed themselves in ways that depicted subtle, yet significant differences from those of years to come, revealing an overall interesting and introspective perspective of the fairly tranquil, but brief period between World War II and the Korean War. The latter event broke shortly before the public release of this film in 1950. Meanwhile, as the storyline reveals, the "cold war" had already begun and, for many people, nuclear experimentation was beginning to command a scary center stage presence. Other "hot" issues of the day include McCarthy type anti-Communism (or Anti-Americanism as it was in actuality!), racial and ethnic equality and mixed sexual attitudes; but in "Our Very Own" we are deliberately steered inward, into family and personal matters, with the broad and burgeoning concerns of the day kept at bay...almost. Issues such as those mentioned above are not directly infiltrating any aspect of daily life in the treatment offered here, except for occasional inference. The period feel is thereby enhanced.

As "Our Very Own" grapples its way toward the emerging central theme of adoption, its still subtle stigmas of the times permeate the otherwise gentile facade of the featured suburbanite family. Ann Dvorak, in character, offers a fine portrayal as a birth mother as opposed to a rearing one. Her persona is carved from the "other side of the tracks" folks, but a sensitive manner prevails. She exudes pathos, yet maintains dignity for all concerned.

Now, some sixty years hence, we are treated to a time capsule view of an earlier, mostly bygone, America complete with some focal points of its day plus those things eternal that seem to pass through generations, oblivious to time and technology. The story line may be unremarkable (although it maintains interest) but the real and stylized adaptations of Middle American life at the time are enhanced by fine performances that lend a glimpse into aspects of our culture that were probably at least partly present at mid-century past.

One acoustic footnote: "Our Very Own" also concentrates on excellent sound and sensitive background music. An Oscar nomination was achieved for Best Sound Recording.

I watched this movie on the strength of comments on this site. I was not a great fan of any of the actors save for Natalie Wood and Ann Dvorak and neither was the headliner. But I stand corrected. Notwithstanding the negative comments posted by adopted IMDb members I found the film compelling on several levels. It touched me deeply. Several scenes brought tears to my eyes with the same effect on my wife who is the tough one in the family. They weren't melodramatic, just done with the right dose of pathos to convey feelings and put the viewer in the characters' places. Each member of the family was successively portrayed and then relegated to the background to focus on Ann Blyth's character, her adoptive parents and her birth mother. All these actors' performances were just right, Dvorak's in particular.

One scene stands out in my mind and I don't think I'm giving much away in retelling it: after Blyth discovers she was adopted she asks the family maid Violet - played by Jessica Grayson in another memorable performance - if she knew. Violet answers "Honey I was here when they brought you 18 years ago". Grayson delivered it with just the right amount of sensitivity to underscore to us and the deeply wounded Blyth that the circumstances of her birth had no effect on her status within the family. There were many more such vignettes, when Blyth returns at 3am and gets yelled at by her father, when Blyth and Wyatt get tangled up in the meaning of the word "mother" the morning after the revelation, the look of fear on Wyatt's face when she allows her second daughter to look for her birth certificate. They showed us a strong, caring family, with patient, intelligent and understanding parents capable of mistakes they were not afraid to admit and tackle. Nobody was all good or all bad, just people with a full range of human strengths and frailties, people like you and me.

I could go on like this forever and give away the whole plot but I'll stop here and close with another memorable scene I feel rounds out this movie. It takes place before Blyth discovers she's adopted, on the beach with Farley Granger. They come out of the surf, draw close and Blyth reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss Granger. The camera draws away and looks down on them from high up as the waves approach them from both sides to merge where they stand. There was a raw sensuality to this scene. It was full of the passion that complements altruistic love.

Bustling upper-middle-class suburban family attempts to deal with the new tension which has descended into the household after one of the daughters discovers her older sister is adopted--and lets her know it for the first time after throwing herself at her sister's boyfriend. What begins as a light domestic drama takes a sharp left turn midway, nearly becoming a soapy stew. Thankfully, screenwriter F. Hugh Herbert keeps his story on track emotionally for much of the way, resulting in a fascinating saga about parental responsibility, petty behavior between siblings, secrets and lies between loved ones. Some of the situations are dramatically heady; credit director David Miller with carefully maneuvering the piece from one episode to the next--also the cast for nimbly keeping their balance. Perhaps in an attempt to smooth out the ruffled feathers, the finale at graduation is topped off with too many happy ribbons. Still, this is an absorbing, unusual, enjoyable film, with good work from Ann Blyth, Jane Wyatt, Donald Cook and Natalie Wood; excellent support from Ann Dvorak as Blyth's 'real' mother. **1/2 from ****