Movie 10 - "Since You Went Away"

This is a 1944 film focusing on the trials of the family left at home while the father is off at war during World War II.  This movie stars Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple as a teenager, Joseph Cotten, Robert Walker, Monty Wooley, Hattie McDaniel, and Agnes Moorehead (that's right...Bewitched).  This movie is honestly one big advertisement for the war effort.  It does show the tense, and patriotic, times that the war brought to the U.S. homefront.  While John Cromwell directed this film, credit is largely given to David O. Selznick.  He adapted the book by Margaret Buell Wilder for the big screen.

Colbert's Anne Hilton is the mother and rock of the Hilton family.  Timothy Hilton, her husband, is in the military and has been shipped out to fight in World War II.  During this time in America, rationing caused shortages of many staples for American families.  Men, women, and children did their parts for the war effort.  Shirley Temple and Jennifer Jones play the Hilton's teenage daughters, Brig and Jane.  Brig is younger and does everything possible to help, saving salvage, selling war bonds, and growing a victory garden.  All the while, she is feeling inadequate and missing her father dearly.  Jane is the older daughter and is graduating.  She wants to find a war job like the other girks, while her parents want her to go to college.  The family has to take in a boarder to make ends meet.  He comes in the form of Colonel Smollett.  He is a crotchety ole retired military man used to barking orders and getting them followed.  Enter his grandson, Bill.  The two do not get along very well, but Jane and Bill become good friends and end up engaged.  Bill is also enlisted and shipped off to war.  During all this are a visit from an old Navy buddy, Fidelia (McDaniel) having to leave the Hilton's because of money issues, and Mr. Hilton missing in action.  The family has to struggle through the hard times, all the while waiting on word about their father.  You see loss, heartbreak, courage, the patriotism of the time, and a country's willingness to work together toward a common goal.  In the end, the family loses and knows joy.  The most difficult scene for me was when Mr. Mahoney got up to walk out of the movie theatre.  It is a moving scene, sadness without words.

While this movie is dramatic and sad, it also has moments of comedy.  The family dynamic is excellent.  They really do work together and do their parts.  It is a long movie...close to three hours.  But it really doesn't seem that long because you want to find out the outcomes of the different story lines.  Hattie McDaniel is awesome in this by the way!  She cracks me up.  Tidbit of trivia...Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker are friends and then engaged in this flick.  In real life they were at the end of a failed marraige.  She ended up marrying Selznick, the movie's producer.  This really is a good movie, although a bit depressing.