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Film · Universal · 1936

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Show Boat

63Watch it awake.

The songs are why it lasted, and the plot turns on a law against a marriage.

The review

Kern's show, filmed again, follows a floating theater on the Mississippi. There is a marriage. The woman's parentage makes that marriage illegal under the law the film is about. Paul Robeson is in it. A major musical gross, and a house can watch it if someone will name that law. I did, before I let the songs take the night.

I am not going to invent a lyric. The songs are the reason it lasted. The law is the wound. A parent who skips that and talks only about the boat has given the kids a prettier picture than the one on screen. The music can stay. The law that forbids the marriage has to stay in the telling too.

Journal

Keep Show Boat in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 63. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

The Sound of Music

78 instead of 63

The Sound of Music is still a musical film, and it scores 78 instead of 63. What you gain is piety: The abbey is a real place with a real rule.

The eight

7
Industry
A floating theater is the workplace, and the songs are the work that lasted.
8
Household
A marriage is the life here, and the law calls that marriage illegal.
5
Piety
What stops the marriage is a law, not a conscience protecting anyone.
7
Courage
The marriage is lived where her parentage makes it illegal.
6
Republic
The plot turns on a law that will not allow this marriage.
5
Temperance
The songs lasted, and they are not a substitute for the law underneath.
7
Truth
Her parentage is the fact the law uses, and that law is the wound.
5
Stewardship
The songs remained, and so did a law that wounded a marriage.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Show Boat · 63IMDb

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Prime Video · 2005

Pass it on

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

63Watch it awake.

The punishments are the old book. The factory is colder than the 1971 film. Read it that way.

The review

Charlie is still the child who has a family and almost nothing else, and the ticket is still a test the other children fail in public. Willy is stranger here, and the flashbacks make his oddness a wound rather than a mystery. That is a choice. It explains him. It also risks teaching that genius is a loneliness the world should indulge. The book did not ask for that much sympathy.

Watch it if the house already knows the story and can say which child is which. The gum, the television, the greed, the spoiled demanding: those four are the lesson, and they are still true. Do not come away wishing to live in the factory. Come away glad Charlie had a grandfather who would go with him and a family to bring the prize home to.