The Human Comedy (1943)
(Clarence Brown, US 1943, 117 min., 35mm)
Reinventing Hollywood | Special Introduction. Multiple protagonists tell the home-front story of the small town of Ithaca, California. Homer Macauley (Mickey Rooney) takes a night job as a telegraph messenger to help his mother make ends meet while his older brother is off to war. This puts Homer in contact with many others in the town, including his brother and sister (Van Johnson, Donna Reed), the young lovers Tom and Diana (James Craig, Marsha Hunt), and wire chief Willie Grogan (Frank Morgan). Life in all its possibilities plays out against this backdrop of the average American town.
Special introduction by David Bordwell, author of Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling.