Our Town

Thornton Wilder’s highly successful stage play Our Town serves as the basis for this 1940s romantic drama feature film. This play, which has become a staple in high school and college drama departments, was simple to produce, had ample parts for fledgling acting students to sink their talents into, and a rather downbeat finale that represented the times on which it was written. This is a Depression-era play and the events depicted in it represent that, while also tackling the themes of progress and change. It was released to theatres in 1938 and was followed up soon afterwards with a movie adaptation. 

This is a film unlike any I have seen before. That is not necessarily a strong selling point though, as there are reasons things are the way that they are in films. If a director or a stage writer is going to divert from that, then there needs to be a good, compelling reason to do so. Lacking that, then it needs to be entertaining and speak to our hearts and/or souls. It shouldn’t make us feel like we are watching an experiment in cinema. But Our Town does just that. It starts with a narrator, speaking directly to the audience and introducing us to small-town America, Grover’s Corners in New Hampshire, where people live peacefully and in harmony. 

At his introduction, the town appears behind this narrator, and he tells us that we are not looking at Grover’s Corners during the present day, i.e. 1940, but in the past, 1901. We are introduced to some of the residents and given insights into their futures, mostly sad insights such as a young boy delivering newspapers who will waste a promising career by going off to war and being killed or a woman who leaves town only to get sick and die while away. It’s pessimistic and depressing, but it gives us a sense of the community. 

Eventually, we are introduced to our main characters: two families that live next door to each other. Dr. Gibbs (Thomas Mitchell), his wife Julia (Fay Bainter), and their son George (William Holden) live in one house, and Charles Webb (Guy Kibbee), his wife Myrtle (Beulah Bondi), and their daughter Emily (Martha Scott) in the other. There are other children, too, but these four are our main cast. George is frustrated with his studies at school and is envious of how Emily can stay so focused on her classes. He looks out his window and sees her studying all the time. Eventually, he reaches out to her and convinces her to give him hints on some of the questions he’s struggling on in their school books. 

The story jumps from here to 1904, three years later. Now, George and Emily are engaged to be married. George comes over on the morning of the wedding, intent on seeing Emily, but is stopped by her mother, who subscribes to the notion that it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. George gets some advice from his future father-in-law that clues him in on the idea that you should never go to your father or father-in-law for marriage advice. Emily is feeling unsure about being an adult and getting married, but they eventually go through with the ceremony. 

Another nine years are skipped, and now Emily is giving birth to their second child. Complications arise, and she is slipping away. It is here that the filmmakers shied away from the direction of the play, and it is here that the film, already struggling to make much of an impression, falls apart at the seams. This ending feels exactly like what it is: a tacked-on happy ending that fails to understand the emotional beats of the story as a whole and feels entirely unsatisfactory. This is supposed to be a story about a small town experiencing the pains of change, and the original ending is part of that. The way this film ends just doesn’t work for that and feels like a studio that doesn’t trust its audience to handle a sad ending.

On top of that, lacking the act breaks that a stage play has, the time jumps feel unnatural and leave us with too much left in the void inbetween. The gimmick of a narrator telling us the happenings in between these breaks works on the stage but on screen it just comes across as filler to avoid having to film these parts of the story. It gives the film a feeling of being incomplete, like a movie where some of the reels have been lost to time and this narration has been inserted to fill in for the missing scenes. It was novel in the first act but in later scenes it just feels out of place. 

This is a film that just feels dated in every way. Some films age like a fine wine while others just turn sour and are plagued with chunks of sediment. This is the latter. In 1968, when it came time to renew the copyright, it was instead allowed to fall into the public domain. It has not been well preserved over the years and has gone mostly forgotten, except to those looking for some of the early works of William Holden, who has not yet grown into the man he would be known as in his later works. He is hardly recognizable here, not just because of his age but because he would change so much as an actor and a persona later on. 

This story is just far too fragmented to make much of an impression on modern audiences. It was decently received in 1940, including several Academy Award nominations, but comparing it to other films from the same year that are considered bonafide classics, this one just doesn’t hold a candle to them. It’s more of a curiosity now than anything else. It can be viewed nearly everywhere and for free thanks to being in the public domain and, thanks to the short runtime, it won’t overstay its welcome. But it is not a great time at the movies and is best viewed with tempered expectations. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Outstanding Production: Sol Lesser

Best Actress: Martha Scott

Best Original Score: Aaron Copland

Best Scoring: Aaron Copland

Best Sound Recording: Thomas T. Moulton

Best Art Direction - Black-and-White: Lewis J. Rachmil

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Release Date: May 24, 1940

Running Time: 90 minutes

Not Rated

Starring: William Holden, Martha Scott, and Fay Bainter

Directed by: Sam Wood