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 O'Neill's work, which originally made gentle mockery of small town middle American taste and values, has perhaps unfortunately, these days gained an uncalled-for 'satiric' edge.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.

MGM's four big movies of 1935 were "Mutiny on the Bounty," "A Tale of Two Cities," "David Copperfield," and this one. It's the quietest of the four but to me the most impressive, a distillation of Eugene O'Neill's memory play (not his childhood, he said, but his childhood as he wished it were) that's bathed in nostalgia that's more potent and poignant than ever. Screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett get it past the Hays Office without really whitewashing its racier aspects (and Helen Flint's superb as the floozie who nearly corrupts our hero), and Eric Linden, who's entirely up to it, never again had this good a part. Top-billed Wallace Beery perhaps overdoes his drunken- charmer shtick, but Lionel Barrymore nicely underplays opposite him, and Aline MacMahon, always perfection, has one of her best roles--watch her reactions, how she plays love, disgust, and pity simultaneously. The rest of the family--Spring Byington, Mickey Rooney, Frank Albertson, Bonita Granville--are all exactly right. The MGM engineering--always-appropriate music, photography, costumes--helps rather than standardizes the material, the pacing's beautiful, and the warmth is unforced. You can weep at it and not feel like you're being manipulated.

In this sweet piece of Americana, Eric Linden stars as a rebellious teenager at the turn of the century. His idea of being rebellious is a little different than nowadays, which makes it refreshing to watch. He reads radical socialist literature and drinks beer after curfew, which makes his mother Spring Byington worry and his father Lionel Barrymore in constant need of helpful lectures to straighten him out. Weren't the good old days nice, when the biggest problem a man faced was how to stop his son from making an embarrassing valedictorian speech? If you think so, you'll love every version of this movie.

What is perhaps the cutest thing about this movie couldn't have been enjoyed if one had seen it at its release in 1935. Little Mickey Rooney, who plays the younger, prank-playing brother grew up and played the lead brother thirteen years later in the musical adaptation Summer Holiday. The casting of the remake is very respectful to the original, unlike many remakes. Lionel Barrymore, the perfect father figure, was replaced by Walter Huston, another perfect father figure, and the drunken yet jolly Wallace Beery was replaced by Frank Morgan. The spinster Aline McMahon was replaced by Agnes Moorehead, and the motherly Spring Byington with Selena Royle.

As much as I love Lionel Barrymore, and you know how much I do, I like the 1948 version better. Frank Morgan is more sincere in his vows to reform than Wallace Beery, probably because of his own personal experiences he put into the role. The musical remake is softer and sweeter, as even though most of the troubles in this story are faced with tongue-in-cheek humor, there are some moments in the original that are a little sad. For example, there's a father-son talk about falling in love and facing real life, and after Lionel gives the talk, he's left alone to question himself and sigh in anguish and disappointment in the result. Walter gives the same talk and is able to fix his son's problems. Pick which cast you want to see, and rent one of the versions for a step back in time. The original is very enjoyable, so if you decide to try it first, you probably won't be disappointed.

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.

I love period movies and this one captures the time and place as well as it is possible. The humor is gentle and very touching. The scene of the 4th of July morning, when all the young boys come out with their firecrackers never fails to put me on the floor laughing.

Wallace Berry's delivery of the one word line "soup?" is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

I heartily recommend this movie to anyone who has a heart. It will be touched