Pertinent to today's issues.
Things don't chance much. The issues and politics are still relevant today. It is a good object lesson for those who believe that history started on the day they were born.
sharei noticed that too.
shareYes, drugs and alcohol, still big problems for our society. Also domestic assault. Prohibition now is thought of as silly restrictions of individual freedoms that were unenforceable because people wanted alcohol and were drinking it anyway. They don't know the forces that produced Prohibition. Alcoholism was rampant with the resulting poverty and domestic abuse.
I have just finished reading The Collaborators, a rather academic study of the collaboration between the chiefs of Hollywood and the Nazi regime that lasted throughout the 30s and into our entry into WWII. There is so much behind the writing and story telling of these early talkies than I had ever imagined. I look at them diffently now.
i like to watch old movies from the 30s and 40s because i see it as looking through the window of time. they had cars, radios,telephones, ect. just as we have today except the airport has pretty much replaced the classic scene at the railroad station. that was my parents generation. i don't remember the exact quote but at the end of the movie robert young said that "perhaps things will change" for their child. 80yrs later many aspects are very disappointing.
shareI know what you mean. One other reason I like them is I know that my mother very likely saw this movie when she was young. She was a big movie goer, it was cheap and no TV in those days. Her taste in furniture was certainly formed then as she liked to decorate in art deco style. But I feel closer to her watching these films once again.
I am a bit of student of the 30s. There is another book, Double Cross, a best seller about a year ago, about the British spy network during the war. It is amazing how smart they were with no reliable phones, computers etc. The did all that with rather primitive tech available.
First, my compliments to all the posters on this thread, and their thoughtfulness.
I wanted to reply to madman58 specifically, because, like you, I couldn't help but reflect on today, especially at the end. (Robert Young was moving with those lines about what the child will be born into, and how the country will deal with its problems.) I thought about today, where we have all kinds of "understandings" and new perspectives on addiction, but the war is a slaughter. How many of our young men come back from military service - esp. in combat zones - have this to deal with as well? I feel like it's just barely contained in the sense that we still think of these related problems as individual ones - but I think the perspective of the movie is one we need to adopt. This is a national and social problem which is devastating to our best resources: our own people. It reminded me of some of my studies in college that taught me that Prohibition was really a result of a devastating social condition of destroyed families; that's why so many women were campaigners for it. It was considered a family problem. I think they had the perspective right but of course we need to see the result of a well-intentioned law.