An average movie

I wonder how I actually ended up watching this movie. Indeed, I constantly add movies to my queue. Right now, I’m focusing on older movies released during or before the 40’s and I think I picked up this one because it had been nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award back in 1944 (it didn’t win though). Well, to be honest, I really had a hard time to care about the damned thing. Of course, the fact that I was really exhausted when I watched it probably didn’t help, even if I did start to watch it at 17:00. Anyway, I still don’t think that this movie required almost 3 hours of running time. Seriously, nothing really much happened though the whole duration, there were only a handful of characters and none of them really evolved, except maybe Jane Hilton. Basically, it was some piece of propaganda showing how everybody back at home in the US was brave while most of the men were gone to fight during WWII. Not so long ago, I saw ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ which was released only a few years later after and this movie was quite interesting in the sense that it delivered a more complex and actually rather bleak view on the impact this war had on the individuals who were directly involved. You won’t get any of this here though but, on the other hand, back in 1944, the US were still deeply involved in this conflict so I guess you can’t blame them to try to give a more positive message. It was also pretty neat to see Shirley Temple when she was just a teenager and it’s a pity to think that her career would end only 5 years later. Anyway, to conclude, even though the damned thing was terribly cheesy, I have to admit that it was also rather harmless and I guess it is worth a look but probably only if you really like the genre.