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Movies as History
 One
of the ways I like to study American history is
by watching old Hollywood movies, especially those made (usually in black and
white) around and before 1946, the year I was born. I don’t mean
historical movies as such; Hollywood has always courted absurdity when it
has consciously  tried
to show historical persons and events as
they actually were, as in its sentimental portrayals of “great”
presidents. I like them best when they show us history by accident.
Old movies show us old manners,
the standards of behavior that used to hold American society together. The
rules were mostly implicit, enforced less by law than by civil affections. We
became conscious of those rules mostly when they’d lost their
authority. Before that we took them so much for granted that we hardly
knew they were there.
Oddly enough, it’s when the
movies aren’t trying to tell us anything that they often tell us most.
They give us accurate reflections of the way people really thought they
should behave when they weren’t even thinking about their manners.
They show us what Americans of another time could safely assume — a
country enviably at peace with itself, even in wartime.
I was amused a few years ago
when I watched an old film in which Humphrey Bogart has an auto accident
and wakes up in the hospital. He is lying in bed smoking a cigarette. Imagine a
time when Americans could light up in hospitals! It was called freedom.
In the old version of Miracle
on 34th Street (released in 1947), the real miracle seems to be
34th Street itself. The street is marvelously clean; bums and garbage are
nowhere in sight. All the New Yorkers are well dressed and polite to each
other. Good breeding is taken for granted. And, as in all old movies, you
don’t hear any foul language.
![[Breaker quote for Movies as History: What old Hollywood can teach us]](2005breakers/050519.gif) In
the old Hollywood musicals, you also hear something
you don’t hear much anymore: namely, music. People with fine voices
sing melodies with witty lyrics. They sing about romance and keep their
clothes on. Their great aspiration is to get married — permanently. And
preferably to someone of the opposite sex.
In the old movies, people pray and
go to church. Sometimes miracles happen to them; often their prayers are
answered. Spirituality is a natural part of their lives. In fact, entire movies
could be made about religious subjects without protest from the
Anti-Defamation League. Many movies were pitched to Catholics who had
come in huge numbers from Europe and Ireland and sought acceptance as
Americans.
Gentleman’s
Agreement was thought daringly liberal in its day (also 1947) for
depicting social discrimination against Jews, but now it seems very
conservative. A casual shot of Grand Central Station shows women wearing
dresses, hats, gloves, and high heels. A scene in an office building shows the
latest high-tech gadget: an intercom.
You can easily get the false
impression from old films that living was cheaper in those days, because the
prices of things were nominally much lower. A dollar in 1946, even with
postwar inflation, could buy more than you can get for $10 now. So what
these movies actually tell us is how much the government and the banking
system have debased the currency since then — a vital aspect of
history we rarely pay attention to. I recently watched a film in which Cary
Grant, trying to impress a woman, tells her he makes a hundred dollars a
week. (We know he’s exaggerating.)
In the old movies people are always
patriotically loyal to the government, but they can also assume that the
government will generally leave them alone. They also feel that the
government belongs to them and will respond to what the people really want.
This is of a piece with the general absence of cynicism in the old Hollywood,
though Frank Capra’s films, for all their optimism, hint that
government has its dangers if it falls into the hands of the wrong people.
What the old Hollywood really
celebrated was normality. Its vision of the normal was imperfect, often
corny, but what a relief it affords from today’s corrosive obsession
with the abnormal and the alienated. The movies of that era furnish a sort of
historical record of the American spirit.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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