• Like Make Way For Tomorrow– another well-acted tearjerker
  • The biggest movie of 1944– #1 box office and won a whopping seven Oscars (including all the big ones—picture, director, actor, supporting actor, screenplay, song)
  • Barry Fitzgerald hilarious as the stodgy old priest, and Bing Crosby’s easy charm and affability is a smooth as it gets. The rest of the ensemble is good as well. Gene Lockhart and Porter Hall- so reliable- they’d show up again together as villains of sorts in Miracle on 34th Street. Porter Hall as an angry atheist- haha. The kids in the choir here are like a variation on the Dead End kids game in the 1930’s Warners films
  • Leo McCarey’s direction is upspecial—he has a trademark (a bad one) of throwing in a casual wipe edit once in a while for no reason
  • This is more trivia than evaluation here but Fitzgerald was nominated for lead and supporting actor for the same performance- wild
  • McCarey’s shrewdly works the songs into the story naturally. Bing starts a boys choir to keep the gang out of trouble, the young girl in trouble wants to be a singer, his old friend is in the Carmen opera, he sings a lullaby to Fitzgerald (which works as a good scene somehow- testament to McCarey and the actors)
  • In the movie the record company says “nobody is buying schmaltz” — ironic a little with the nature of this very sentimental film
  • Within the film there’s this little short scene about Lockhart’s son going off to war that is great and the reunion with Fitzgerald’s mother at the end before Bing walks off into the sunset like an angel who has accomplished his mission won’t leave anyone with a dry eye either
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1944