Filho Querido

We saw this film sometime in the late 1980's on the old AMC. You remember AMC, the station that didn't like colorized or edited movies. That showed films how they were meant to. Well enough of that.

The HAPPY LAND was one (1) of those fine WWII films that gave you a peek of what the home front was like and the effects the war had upon it. This was effectively and economically done. Not as long as SINCE YOU WENT AWAY or the HUMAN COMEDY more in line with the FIGHTING SULLIVANS another seldom seen home front film. Or at least seldom seen since AMC went to seed.

The importance of these films is to give a glimpse into the lives of our parents or grandparents and not just the war, but the effects of rationing, personal loss and the fear that we could lose. Many young people have no concept what a close run thing WWII was. Not that we would have been conquered. But that Asia and Europe would have been dominated by two (2) powers both with a race superiority agendas. The NAZI Germans who wanted to create a master race and Imperial Japan who thought they WERE the master race.

The film as far as we know is unavailable on any video format. Seems like a shame when so much bad material is rushed to DVD. 20th Century Fox should do something about this. After all they have released A YANK IN THE R.A.F which main claim to fame is Betty Grable and Tyrone Power.

Happy Land is a film set firmly in time and place during the World War II era. Had this been attempted during subsequent military involvements the USA has been involved in Happy Land would have been hooted off the screen.

As it is Don Ameche, Frances Dee, Harry Carey and the rest are held firmly in check by director Irving Pichel, if they weren't this film would have more tears than the Mississippi.

Happy Land is set in small town Midwest USA in Iowa. Ameche and Dee receive that most dreaded of telegrams between 1941 and 1945 from the Navy Department informing them that their son and one and only child Richard Crane has been killed in action in the Pacific.

Ameche totally withdraws into himself, not even going to his pharmacy to tend to his business there. It's then that he receives a visit from his long deceased grandfather Harry Carey. It's then he has an It's A Wonderful Life experience only it's a lot more reassuring and it's not his life.

Short and sweet Richard Crane had a wonderful life and he died so that others might enjoy freedom. You could never make this message film about any subsequent war.

Happy Land's message is why we fight and die in 1943. It's a great fantasy film unlikely to be remade.

Finding this oddity on cable recently, I was quickly seduced by its opening sequence, a Welles-like plunge down main street into a small everytown's heart, Marsh's pharmacy. Here, as some clever camera work reveals, solid citizen Lew Marsh (Don Ameche) tends to the blisses of early 40's Hollywood America; everyone's prescription is filled, sundaes topped off with a cherry, local oddballs humored, etc.

What most recommends the film is its frame narrative. Quickly the idyll is broken when Marsh learns his son has been killed in the war. He sinks into a lengthy depression. Enter the ghost of Gramp to conduct psychotherapy: he spirits Marsh back into the past where we relive the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the now-dead Rusty. While the mid-section unfolds linearly, Marsh and Gramp function offscreen as a Greek chorus (their melancholy dialogue often a grim counterpoint to the generally cheerful scenes). Then it's back to the present where an exorcized Marsh learns to stop questioning the wisdom of sacrificing young men in war. "Rusty died a good death," Gramp's ghost counsels, and we know it's only a matter of time before Marsh will agree.

Three years before "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946), "Happy Land" was already hijacking the "Christmas Carol" device of reliving the past on a therapeutic sightseeing tour. Unlike the Stewart film, though, the tone is more darkly somber, lingeringly mournful. The theme of sorrow outweighs the theme of recovery. Ameche looks and sounds wracked, bitter.

In fact, the film's heart is scarcely in its chief enterprise, which is to steel its audience for more wartime sacrifice. It seems at times almost to be working against its own message that war deaths are "good deaths." I imagine it may have helped salve some broken hearts, but the crime of this type of film is that, if it succeeds, it only helps to break more.

I thought this was a wonderfully nostalgic movie. The acting is well done, and the end is just a real tear-jerker. It brings back the feelings that I believe really did exist in WWII, right down to the fateful trip the girl from Western Union had to make to deliver the telegram that said his son died. Excitement, no. A few laughs, yes. Great nostelgic drama with a good story line.

When Randy Marsh is killed in action during WWII, his father, Lew (Don Ameche), takes it very hard. He is depressed and wonders if the loss was worth it. Fortunately, God takes pity on him and sends Lew's dead father (Harry Carey) back to help him through the death. Magically, dead dad transforms Lew back in time and they view Lew's life as well as Randy as he grows to manhood. It's all very nostalgic as well as highly reminiscent of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"--and that is a fundamental weakness of the film. It IS derivative and it also puts forth a strange message that the boy's death wasn't so bad after all. Clearly the film was intended as propaganda in order to try to get the public to accept the necessity of their sons' deaths fighting the Axis powers. Fortunately, following this weird ghostly meeting, the film works very well when one of Randy's pals (Harry Morgan) arrives to visit with the Marsh family. Overall, while I wasn't thrilled by the style of the film (i.e., the ghost story element), the film worked very well because of the great acting and the lovely way the film was directed. Worth seeing even if by today's standards it's a bit old fashioned.