BEFORE: I swear, my brain puts these films together and my unconscious seems to have a hidden agenda... I was just riffing on a musical theme, and I suddenly realized I'd set up a little nostalgia chain - "Rock of Ages" was made in 2012 and is set in the 1980's, and tonight's film was made in 1981 and is set in the 1930's. Tomorrow's film will fit right in with that theme also. Linking from "Rock of Ages", Alec Baldwin was also in "It's Complicated" with Steve Martin (last seen in "Fantasia 2000").
THE PLOT: During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent school teacher.
AFTER: I think I tried to watch this film when I was a kid, but I found it confusing. I think I just lacked the mental software to understand the adult relationships - plus, I had no concept of what lip-synching was, or even how today's music is different from the music of the olden days.
The whole point of this film is that music, and later movies, served as escapism during the Great Depression. At one point during the 1930's, filmmakers were afraid to show rich people in movies for fear that it would alienate the poorer viewers - however, it turned out to be exactly what people wanted to fantasize about. So the main character here has elaborate fantasies based around songs (sort of like 1930's style "music videos") to help him forget that he's in a loveless marriage and his sheet music/record store business is not going well.
The problem comes, in order for these fantasies to have the full effect, the movie needs to show us the bad times as well - the circumstances that he wants to escape from. So the film doesn't really serve as escapism for its own audience, because who wants to see a depressing film about the Depression?
This brings up an interesting question - when were the "Good old days"? Our parents probably romanticized the 1950's, and their parents did the same for the 1920's, but were those past decades any better? People back then still had unwanted pregnancies, plus there was prostitution and syphillis and infidelity - plus they didn't have the benefits of modern technology and modern medicine. So maybe there never were any good old days after all.
Plus, as this film reminds us, there was also a lot of crime during the Depression. Plus the forensic technology was also very limited - so our hero gets accused of a murder because of some faulty evidence, and there's no DNA evidence to exonerate him. This leads to a confusing ending - which is sort of similar to the one seen in "Brazil". Honestly, I'm not really sure what happened in the end here - was it another elaborate fantasy? And if so, what does that mean?
I had "The Dream" after watching this film - and it had been a while. That's my most common recurring nightmare, in which I'm talking to my ex-wife and we're negotiating the end of our relationship. She tells me that she wants to see other people (women), and I'm kind of against that. It's gotten a bit tamer over the years, but it's still unsettling. It was probably sparked by all the infidelity depicted in this film, plus the fact that I was at a party last night, hanging out with some women with very short hair.
Also starring Bernadette Peters (last heard in "Anastasia"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "A View to a Kill"), Jessica Harper (last seen in "Minority Report"), Vernel Bagneris (last seen in "Ray"), John Karlen.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Model T's
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