Sorry I missed you last night. Grimsley came over and we did watch a movie, but it was one you've probably seen, "Nightcrawler" (2014) with Jake Gyllenhal, so I didn't bother to review it. I've seen it three times myself. Tonight I am a little disappointed because I missed the Chrysta Bell concert, which I had a ticket for and had been very much looking forward to. I'm a big CB fan, I've seen her four times since 2012. Tonight would've been the fifth, in a little 150 seat theater in Beverly Hills at a place called The Wallis Annenberg Center, but misfortune struck at the last minute. I was checking the Wallis' website for directions and I noticed a posted showtime of 7pm. I figured it must mean the time the doors opened, but I had Grim call them anyway, just to make sure. He was gonna go with me to the show. Grim called me back with the bad news : "Nope, that's the time she goes onstage". I had surmised that if 7pm was the actual set time, then it must have to do with the fact that The Wallis is in Beverly Hills, and BH is populated by elderly folks, who - if they go to shows at The Wallis - would want those shows to begin and end early.
Grim said I was exactly right, the person he spoke to on the phone told him as much : "we start most of our shows at 7 due to our clientele".
My question, which I didn't get to ask, was "why would Chrysta Bell play such a place? None of the centenarians who go to The Wallis would've even heard of her. Of course, her fans would still go, but how many of 'em would've had trouble with the 7pm start time? I sure did. There was no way I could make it down to BH by 7 during my evening break. I don't get off until 6:30, and with traffic......fuggettabouddit
So there was no way I could go, and I was hugely disappointed. I would've rather missed the King Crimson show, to be honest, because they play almost every year. CB rarely plays, and she's....well, she's CB. It sucked on wheels to miss this show. But what could I do?
Well, I could watch a movie and that's what I did. I saw an unusual, philosophical story about love and marriage set in Weimar Germany during the Depression. The film was called "Little Man, What Now?" (1934), starring the tempestuous Margaret Sullavan and the handsome Douglass Montgomery, who has the appearance of a Silent film star. Both are American actors and the movie is played in English, though Sullavan and Montgomery portray a young German couple named Lammchen and Hans.
She has just become pregnant, and Hans is struggling to keep a job in the faltering economy. There is also a political upheaval taking place, though no Fascist faction is shown, so the story must be taking place in the 1920s (no date is given). The agitprop is mostly coming from workers inflamed by the upstart of Marxism in Russia and Eastern Europe not far away. Hans steers clear of the political rallies. He has his own philosophy, summed up in one line : "A peaceful man will have no trouble".
All Hans wants to do is earn enough money to support his wife and soon to be born child. But he does lose his job to a tyrannical boss, and now the couple are forced to live with Hans' mother, an independent and forceful woman who has plenty of money. She likes to throw parties for her friends, and turns out to be a Madame, much to Hans' shame. But while they are living with her, Hans and Lammchen meet a debonair older man, Herr Jachman, who will end up as their benefactor.
Jachman is played to perfection by the great Alan Hale, father of "The Skipper". Hale Sr. was in so many movies in the 1930s that you couldn't have missed him. Here, upon meeting the couple, he flirts with the supple, leggy Lammchen and ignores Hans her husband. He's a rogue but ultimately a kind one. When he realizes Lammchen will never fall for him because she is devoted to Hans, Herr Jachman then decides to go the noble route, and help the couple rather than try to break them up.
He does this in a grand way (which is total Alan Hale, who I am a big fan of), but then we find out that Herr Jachman has a destiny waiting for him that we may have suspected was coming.
Hans and Lammchen continue their upward struggle. He finally gets a job as a salesman in a new Art Deco looking department store. But the bosses there have set quotas on the employees.
There is a lot of union politics expressed in the script, as well as some far out personal philosophies. The crew ask Hans if he is a Pacifist. Another salesman is a practicing Nudist (not shown, haha).
Remember that this is Weimar Germany, which had Expressionist Art and filmmaking and all kinds of far out cabaret nightclubs in the 1920s. The atmosphere was very liberal, but the economy was crashing, which led to the rise of Hitler.
"What Now, Little Man?", directed by the great Frank Borzage, is not a political film. It is a film about love conquering all, set against a background of political unrest and economic injustice.
Hans, being a "peaceful man" (his words) and Lammchen his ever optimistic wife, are immune to all that is going on around them, because they have each other, and most importantly, they have a baby on the way.
This is a movie about the supreme importance of love and family above all other concerns, even politics, even economics or any other socio-political "hive mind" propaganda you care to name.
I'll not tell you the outcome, but everything hinges on Hans having enough money to take his wife to the hospital to have her baby. The monetary issues are so similar to today that it will seem, in that sense, that you are watching a new release. Ditto the politics, and the naive return to socialism that is being proposed by a few current candidates.
We've been through all this before, folks, almost 100 years ago. Communism didn't work then any more than Fascism did, and neither will work now.
But love and family will always work, and having faith. Just simple personal faith, not the grandstanding type.
"Little Man, What Now?" is a beautiful movie, with wonderful performances from Sullavan and Montgomery, and especially Alan Hale. There are many themes in the script, and there are other supporting characters I haven't identified who play important roles in the outcome.
You know how "they don't make movies like this anymore"?
This film could be Exhibit A in that discussion. They couldn't even try to make it today. /////
I give it my Highest Recommendation, Two Huge Thumbs Up. The world needs movies like this one.
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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