Langdon's muscle is a costume; the gentle part is the soldier who came for her.
The review
I put this on expecting a brag, and the title is the wrong hint. Harry Langdon plays a Belgian soldier who comes to America to find the woman who wrote him during the war. She is blind. This is his feature. Fine with kids in the room.
The strength is a costume. The gentleness is the character. He walks into a town of bootleggers, a mess that is not his manner. Coming all that way on letters is already a real errand, and her blindness is a fact about her, not a bit to copy. If the kids ask what he is strong at, say the gentle part. The muscle is the outfit.
The Lego Movie is still a comedy film, and it scores 69 instead of 58. What you gain is stewardship: What is at stake is the boy's right to build on the man's work.
The eight
5
Industry
He was a soldier; the strongman body is a costume, not the man.
7
Household
He crosses to America for the woman who wrote in the war, and she is blind.
6
Piety
Gentleness is the character, set down in a town of bootleggers.
6
Courage
A soldier comes from the war to find her, then walks into bootleggers.
5
Republic
The town he enters is a bootleggers' mess, the local law already failing.
6
Temperance
Bootleggers are the town's want; his own manner is gentleness, not the bottle.
6
Truth
The muscle is a costume, and the woman from the letters is truly blind.
5
Stewardship
What he carries into a bootlegger town is gentleness, not another racket.
Adults. The courtroom is the work. What happened and what can be proved are not the same fact.
The review
A soldier shoots a bar owner and says the man raped his wife. A former prosecutor who now fishes more than he practices takes the defense. I am not going to describe the testimony. In 1959 the testimony itself was the scandal, because a courtroom in an American film was asked to say out loud what a trial of this kind has to say. The lawyer is good at the saying. He is also having a good time, and the film lets you see the good time, which is the correction inside the craft.
Adults. A house does not need this as a primer. A house that wants one picture of how a verdict is made, rather than how a villain confesses, can use it. Ask, at the end, what the jury was allowed to know and what the rooms already knew. Those are different piles. The decade's more famous courtroom hours snap the case shut with a witness who breaks. This one is more honest about the gap, and less honest about whether the lawyer is a man to admire. Admire the proceeding. Decline the grin.
