Best movie of this year hands down!

Wow! Such a good movie.

A Brilliant Conflict

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

"Our Town" is an old fashioned, overly quaint play that probably belongs on the stage. But this 1940 film version directed by Sam Wood probably does as good a job as anyone else could at bringing it to life on screen. And the fact that it debuted on the eve of WWII gives its simplistic, misty-eyed attitudes about small-town American life an added poignancy. Now, in Trump America, it feels like an artifact of a previous epoch. Do towns like this even exist anymore? Rural desperation and a conservative gun culture have pretty much decimated the charms of small-town America today.An extremely young William Holden plays the male lead, and it's distracting to see him trying to play a character so much younger than he probably was when he made this movie. The same is somewhat true of his love interest, Martha Scott, as well, though she fares better, probably because she had the advantage of performing in the stage version first. The better performances come from a bevy of seasoned character actors like Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, and Guy Kibbee."Our Town" was nominated for six Academy Awards, but won none of them: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Scott), Best B&W Art Direction, Best Original Score and Scoring (Aaron Copland was nominated for both categories; I've never understood how a score could be eligible for both), and Best Sound Recording.Grade: B+

It's one thing to take a book, which is always considerably longer and rife with characters, and do some cutting and re-tooling. It is quite another to take a scripted play, one that has survived the test of time, and abuse the author's intent. This is like taking "A Glass Menagerie" and having Laura Wingfield regain the proper use of her legs. What a joke that would be. This is every bit as startling. It uses the cheapest Hollywood, 1940's encroachment on artistic rights to tell its own story. Without the sadness of death this is a different story. Maybe if they changed the name of the movie to "Your Town," we wouldn't have any expectation of truth. Apparently, Thornton Wilder had his own wishes imposed upon. I'm glad there are three other versions of this, so we can see it done properly.

I was deeply disappointed by this film directed by Sam Woods. I do love the sets, and the scope of showing the town, but the best thing about the original three-act play is that the play is performed without a set and the actors mime their actions without the use of props. Author, Thornton Wilder once said: "Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind – not in things, not in 'scenery.' Throughout the play, Wilder uses meta-theatrical devices, such as narration by a stage manager who tells them what they are seeing. Still, it's for the audience to use their imagination vision to put it in motion. In this movie, it's more set in stone, what the producers want us to see. Set in the fictional American small town of Grover's Corners, it tells the story of an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives. Scenes from the town's history between the years of 1901 and 1913 are performed. The film mostly focus this same three act format. Act I: Daily Life introduces the audience to the people living in Grover's Corners in 1901. There is a lot of filler scenes about minor characters that play no big part in the main plot. Honestly who cares about the newspaper boy and milk man? The only characters, the film should focus on, is the Webb and Gibbs households. William Holden and Martha Scott are pretty typecast as George Gibbs and Martha Scott. They are too old to play teenagers, and the dialogue between them is wooden and dull. The movie is a bit boring, watching somebody mundane life that you're asking yourself. What is the point of this? I shouldn't be watching this? I'm wasting life, here! I think the only thing that was interesting and tense, was portraying young people prepare to wed. The second act is badly written in both the play, and the film. I don't care that Our Town won Pulitzer Prize; the flashbacks written sucks. It really hurt the already slow pacing being out of order. Once again, you're asking yourself, why am I watching this? Another thing, the movie does is talk about eternity in a lengthy monologue. I like it, but I was hoping a 'show, don't tell'. This movie and play is so tell to the point, it makes us look like clueless idiots. It's really dark story, but it does have a good message in the end. The ending to the film is way different than that of the play. There have been a lot of irate critics about the change in the ending. This part of the film, I think its works. The play has such a cynical ending. In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin, on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave. I think the movie did better to show the message of living each day the fullest message than the play. I have to say the Stage Manager (Frank Craven) was pretty good in this movie, but I have to say, the 2003's remake with Paul Newman is the one worth watching. Even the 1977's version with Hal Halbrooks works a lot better than this. The Stage Manager plays as a God-like symbol. Although Our Town avoids discussion of religion, Wilder hints that a spiritual entity manages human life in much the same way that the Stage Manager dictates the flow of this play. I do like the freedom of breaking the fourth wall with him walking in and out of scenes, asking questions to the audience, and telling characters to shut up. It's rare to see this in 1940's movies and even rare to see it, today films. The movie hasn't aged well. The film is litter with scratches and marks. Even with playing it in my DVD player, I felt like any minute, the film was going to rip apart. One thing that I love about the film is the soundtrack. It's such a beautiful tune that I think the song will outlive the play in future time. In my opinion, Our Town could had been better written, even for the times, its set. Our Town would had shown life between and after the Industry Revolution Turn of the Century, a lot better with putting more immigrations, showing more technology etc. etc. Instead, the town is nearly the same from 1901 to 1913. The film lacks any social community. Despite the townspeople's well-meaning nature, they have only a limited ability or willingness to act or confront societal problems. It really limited the film. It's such a nostalgic archetype that reminds me of any town in America at the time to the point, it doesn't stand out. A mythical place where people are born, grow up, work, fall in love, get married, and die. Characters are archetypes, almost stereotypes, representing time-honored small town American ideals. It was somewhat mirror to a point, that Walt Disney model the design for Main Street USA in Disneyland. Perhaps a political message in itself, Our Town privileges the study of human life and its complexities over blatantly political works that point fingers, stereotype others, and otherwise divide people from one another. If only it focus less on main characters, and more on 'the town', it might had work. This movie should be the case study of society behind human trials and tribulations. Still, it lacks the very thing that makes a community study. Sorry, but our town is not my town.

Perhaps the movie going public wasn't ready for Our Town as its author Thornton Wilder envisioned it. If so, another screen version was just the ticket with Paul Newman now presenting in the role of Stage Manager that Frank Craven created.Frank Craven, Martha Scott, and Doro Merande recreated their stage roles when independent producer Sol Lesser bought the rights to Our Town and filmed it independently for United Artists. The play takes one back to the turn of the last century to Calvin Coolidge rural New England as seen through the eyes of the town druggist who doubles as Stage manager. As he so eloquently puts it nothing much changes in this town, the new immigrants who work in the mill are pretty separate from the Yankee pioneer stock who we look at. Going through the graveyard you see the tombstone names are the same from generation to generation. We're primarily concerned with the Gibbs and Webb families and the budding romance between George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Martha who made her Broadway debut as Emily makes her screen debut also. The fast rising William Holden plays the nice kid George Gibbs and was good in it. So good in fact that he fought that kind of type casting for years until Sunset Boulevard.Unfortunately in this version the ending was radically changed and really did cheapen the production. Thornton Wilder's message about the quiet moments of life holding the most dear memories does not quite come across.One thing that wasn't in Our Town as Wilder wrote it was the explicit gayness of the choirmaster Stinson as played by Philip Wood. It's almost axiomatic that the music in just about any church, organist or choirmaster is usually a gay man. Stinson is gay, no question about it and as the stage manager says, some are not cut out for small town life. It's why he drinks and why he hangs himself, there aren't any kindred spirits for him in tiny Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Stinson would have appreciated Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, he would have known exactly what Jonah Blechman was going through there.If Wilder were writing it post Stonewall, Our Town would have been more explicit on that point. And maybe it will be in future interpretations.