Film · MGM · 1943
Pass it on
The Human Comedy
73Worth an evening.
Sentimental, yes, but the boy's real job is carrying other people's worst sentences.
The review
The sweetness is real, and so is the paper in his hand. Mickey Rooney plays a boy in a California town who delivers telegrams, including the ones from the War Department. His brother is overseas. His mother and a small brother keep the house. Saroyan, so the feeling is thick. A house can watch it. I felt the syrup and I still believed the route he walks.
He owes the neighbors the sentence he is carrying. That debt is the film, more than the glow around it. If the sentiment annoys you, stay for the deliveries and let the music go. The mother holding the house while the wires come in is what I'd point a child toward. The job is real even when the picture is selling you the tears that come with it.
Journal
Keep The Human Comedy in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 73. Yours can differ.
The glance
Temperance is the thin one.
Is appetite shown and then put down, or are you being trained to want the next one?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
It's a Wonderful Life
85 instead of 73
It's a Wonderful Life is still a drama film, and it scores 85 instead of 73. What you gain is temperance: Despair is faced.
The eight
- 9Industry
Delivering the telegrams is the job, and the war notices are why it matters.
- 8Household
Mother, small brother, and a son overseas: the house is lived in, not posed.
- 6Piety
He can hate a war notice and still has to carry it to the door.
- 7Courage
He risks being the face a neighbor remembers on the worst day.
- 8Republic
The town gets the war by wire, and he is how the neighbors are told.
- 5Temperance
The tears come easy, but it does not push you toward a thrill or a pose.
- 8Truth
The War Department lines are not rumors; he has to hand them over.
- 7Stewardship
Mother and the small brother are what the house still holds as the wires arrive.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · The Human Comedy · 73IMDb
