I REMEMBER MAMA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 21

I REMEMBER MAMA

(RKO-Radio) ) HE predominant role allotted to woman, in the American | way of life (as it is inter-| preted for us by Hollywood) is a phenomenon which has attracted | the attention both of the Freudians and_ of The Party. The Freudians (who have a word for it, if I could only remember | which word) regard it as evidence of | the frustration and emotional maladjustment induced by a highly technological Civilisation, while the Party-liners naturally scoff at it as proof of Pluto-Demo-cratic Decadence, and The Decline of, the West. However, after two successive ~weekends of mondayized and tuesdayized holidays (one of them half-fridayized as well) I am in no mood to scoff at, and_ still less inclined to psycho-analyse, the | limited matriarchy whith the economics of housekeeping and the forty-hour week : seem to be forcing upon us. But while I have no doubt that the emotions of Christmastime (recollected in the com- | parative tranquillity of mid-January) made the saga of Mama Hanson more acceptable, I am equally certain that no such favourable pre-disposition is neces-| sary. to enjoy the film. I Remember Mama is intrinsically a jolly good shaw. — The family story is, of course, one which American writers seem to handle with particular success. Life With Father is the example which instantly springs to mind, but most filmgoers will recall others without undue racking of their brains-Ah, Wilderness, You Can't Take It With You, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Chicken Every Sunday are titles with which most readers of contemporary American literature will be familiar and all except the last-named have appeared as films. And all were good films too. Socially they cover a pretty wide range, from the plushy ‘Madison Avenue elegance of the Clarence Day sketches through the comfortable lower middle-class setting of AA, Wilderness and the workaday world of the Hansons to the grimy tenements of Brooklyn and the East Side. There i¢ no doubt that the social milieu of 1 Remember Mama brings the story closegp.to reality as we know it than Life’ With Father could ever do. The Hansons are poor when the story opens, and are still poor enough when it ends. In the manner to which so many of us have become accustomed, ends ‘meet and no more (despite Mama’s good management) and every gain is offset by some commensurate sacrifice. And even the physical setting of the film has an element of familiarity about it. The family lives in one of the hillier suburbs of San Francisco (at the. top of a cable-car route) in a frame house that could probably be duplicated many times over in the older and steeper quarters of Mount Eden, or Karori, or Roslyn. And the ’Frisco ferry buildings, of course, have already been duplicated in Auckland. The only unfamiliar element, in fact, is the close-knit little Norwegian community in which the family lives(Continued on page 23)

FILM REVIEWS {Continued from page 21) noisy Uncle Chris, the three aunts, Jenny, Sigrid, and Trina, Peter Thorkelson the undertaker — and the Norse-American English which Mama uses. But the story is told so well, the casting is on the whole so good, that any sense of strangeness wears off quickly. The cast is diverse eneugh, in all conscienceEdgar Bergen and Rudy Vallee rub shoulders with Irene Dunne, Cedric Hardwicke, Barbara Bel Geddes and Oscar Homolka-but everyone fits in admirably. The story is unashamedly sentimental (I could hear the sound of hardworked handkerchiefs all around me in the dark), but the sentiment is skilfully managed and behind the sweetness there is a quality of strength. Irene Dunne as Mama is, naturally, the star turn. At one or two points I had the feeling that Mama was being remembered "with advantages," but on the’ whole the story is thoroughly credible as well as captivating. Like Mama, in fact, the film is well worth remembering.