Une petite ville sans histoire

The film version of "Our Town" is a thoughtful look at everyday life, often slow-moving, but usually effective. Without any exciting or surprising events, it tells a worthwhile story and leaves an impression on the viewer.

Most of the story follows the Gibbs family and the Webb family, neighbors in a small New Hampshire town. We learn about their lives, loves, and concerns, told in part by a narrator many years after the fact. Most of the time, things move at a very leisurely pace, with details about the town itself often thrown in. It's worth watching because of the memorable and effective closing sequence, in which Emily Webb, who has married George Gibbs, finds her life in danger. The sequence is creatively done, and brings out the importance of the otherwise mundane events we have seen in the rest of the film.

The characters are all nicely defined, with most of the cast doing pretty well, especially the character acting in the background roles. The small-town atmosphere is also convincing. There's certainly nothing spectacular about the film, but if you are interested simple human drama of everyday life, you should enjoy "Our Town".

This might be the slowest of all slow-burners, so if you're going to watch it, brace yourself and be very, very patient. The first hour in this small turn of the century town is for the most part quaint and frankly pretty boring, as we are introduced to various characters and follow them in their everyday lives. There are flashes of a larger meaning in an omniscient narrator, who points out when some of them are going to die, but mostly we seem to be watching simple, mundane events, and a romance completely devoid of spark or chemistry. The production quality is not very high either; even if one takes into account the desire to keep some semblance of Thornton Wilder's lean aesthetic from the stage, there is not enough life in these characters (at least to my modern eyes), the quality of the film stock seems to have deteriorated, and William Holden is both poorly cast and quite wooden.

However, it's all a buildup to that last half hour, and this is where the film really shines, starting with going into the thoughts of the characters at the wedding, and continuing on when the narrator strolls through the cemetery. Wilder's play was both existential and deeply humanistic, and its power comes forth, even with the alteration to the ending, something I'd normally hate. It puts our humble lives into a skeletal framework, and then with its cosmic perspective, forces us to see how brief they are, and how we should treasure every moment, even the simple ones.

Playwright and professor Donald Margulies said that Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life' owes a great deal to 'Our Town', and while he didn't expand on that too much, it's a great point. They ask some of the same questions, such as what's the meaning of this life and do we make a difference being here, but while Capra's answers are positive and joyful and sentimental, Wilder is a little more on the fence, or at least, he lets us interpret (and perhaps this is where the changes in the film were a mistake). In both works the point is made that we need to open our eyes to appreciate what we have and the people around us, but Wilder shows us that our lives are going to be all-too-brief and all-too-small in the grand scheme of things regardless. And yet, he says, "There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being." We are both meaningful and meaningless at the same time. This is not 'Our Town', it's 'Our Lives', or 'Our Humanity'.

The film's incredibly reserved, staid approach is something that doesn't necessarily work 80 years later, in a world that's much faster paced. As a result, it may be hard to appreciate just how groundbreaking and touching it was at the time. In many cases, audience members at the play responded by openly weeping at the end, and as early critic Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times put it, the play "transmuted the simple events of human life into universal reverie" which contained nothing less than "a fragment of the immortal truth." It's pretty hard to translate such a quiet, introspective play to film or to the present world, and as with Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot', it may evoke the reaction that "not enough happens," but I think there's actually quite a bit here, if you wait for it.

Like "Harvey", "The Second Woman" and "Good Morning, Miss Dove", "Our Town" is set in an underpopulated United States town. Its 1901 look shares features with theirs, as do some of its story elements. Everyone knows practically everyone else; and the very fact that such towns are not the sort of place where important thing happens renders what does happen peculiarly intense, as if it had been placed under a magnifying lens in a powerful light. Author Thornton Wilder and his co-writers here adapt what was a most successful and atmospheric play into a deliberately-paced by I suggest an absorbing screenplay. It has the build perhaps of "Picnic" with the underlying calm of a good early western; only the setting here is Grover Corners, New Hampshire, a decidedly northeastern setting.. Sam Wood directed the film with his usual understated skill; and the writers I believe have retained the best of Mr. Wilder's crisp and often memorable dialogue. The film really divides into three parts--which I would nominate as Introduction, George and Emily and Two Futures(?). George Gibbs and Emily Webb in this film become two of the best remembered characters in U.S. fiction. Sol Lesser produced, with music by Aaron Copland, whose repressed melodies seem to me perfectly to serve this understated masterwork of dramatic construction. Production designer William Cameron Menzies and cinematographer Bert Glennon here tried for an uncompromising atmosphere rather than quaint or merely attractive compositions. Julia Heron did the remarkable interiors, with simple but effective wardrobe by Edward P. Lambert. Among the cast, Martha Scott is wonderfully young and unspoiled, and as Dr. Gibbs, Thomas Mitchell plays with Fay Bainter as his wife more-than-expertly. As their neighbors Editor Webb and his wife, Guy Kibbee is unusually restrained and Beulah Bondi as usual solidly dependable or better in every scene she is given. Stuart Erwin ad Frank Craven (as the stage manager) are quite good, and young William Holden shows to much better advantage than he did in several other films of the period. The supporting cast is not given a great deal to do but they do it very seamlessly, in my opinion. But what one remembers of "Our Town" I assert is its haunting, almost poetic quality. The production's pace is leisurely without being slow, electrically tense without being excited and focused without becoming too sad. The story here is about life, death, youth, love, honesty and fear--and the narrative evokes these emotions in the viewer honestly I claim because it is never pretentious and never striving for the effect that it admirably earns. It is I argue a touching black-and-white classic; and it is quite well acted also throughout.

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OUR TOWN is a timeless classic, and this 1940 film version captures the major themes from Thornton Wilder's great play.

At once simple and profound, unsentimental and heart-breaking, the story of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and its citizens is a time capsule of early 20th Century America. Two neighboring families are examined in their everyday lives, and we especially follow George Gibbs (William Holden) and Emily Webb (Martha Scott) as they grow up and marry.

A stage convention, the Stage Manager (Frank Craven), acts here as a tour guide and talks directly to the audience and tells them the history of the town and stories about the characters. Independent of time, the Stage Manager can also see into the future and matter-of-factly see the various deaths of several characters as well as their pasts.

The scene from the cemetery is chilling yet is quite wondrous as the characters there ponder the timelessness of the universe. Also great is Emily's visit back to her family on her birthday, where she finally understand that life is made up or so many small and insignificant details that we hardly notice as times flies by.

The film boasts a terrific cast with Fay Bainter and Beulah Bondi outstanding as the mothers , Thomas Mitchell and Guy Kibbee solid as the fathers. Also notable are Doro Merande as Mrs. Soames, Arthur Allen as the professor, Philip Wood as the organist, Spencer Charters as the constable, Stu Erwin as the milkman, and Ruth Tobey as Rebecca, who gets to tell the "mind of god" anecdote.

The ending is different from the play's but works well in this version.

This is a film that badly needs restoration

I haven't read or seen the play, so I'll leave that topic to a late night discussion group. Thanks to great production design (Menzies), cinematography (Glennon), and art direction (Rachmil), the movie raises small town conformity to near poetic level. Those majestic skyscapes hovering over the elegiac last third lift the narrative to a rare ethereal plateau. Such b&w effects are simply beyond the reach of modern coloration, and couch the film in an appropriate dream-like space.

Sure, nothing much happens in the story. But that's the point. It's the cycle of birth, love, work, death in an idealized small town that's celebrated. The wives agreeably clean and mother, the husbands agreeably earn and father, while the kids look forward to filling their slots. Do they lack imagination? Perhaps, but the overriding message is small town contentment. Happily, the results avoid the saccharine, largely because narrator Craven contrasts with what might become sticky. Thus we can concentrate on the banal events that make up a settled life, and maybe get a new appreciation of them. I can dig that even though I know early 19th century life in a factory or mining town would not yield the same harmonious results. Yes indeed, the rural Grovers Corner is an America that only exists in dreams of time past, and for folks who yearn for the "good ol' days". But the movie itself is none the worse for any of that.