Our Town (1940)

(On Cable TV, February 2019) I had a surprisingly sentimental reaction to Our Town, this classic of American theatre that doesn’t simply delve into the life of its small American town, but does so from beyond the grave, as the undead reflect on the richness of life and how much they miss it. The portrait of small-town America is doubly nostalgic by now, being a 1940 production looking back upon 1901. It’s not interested in the kind of critical social commentary we’d get from Peyton Place and its imitators later on: it’s more given to combining the mundane with the cosmic, using its very high and all-knowing perspective to reflect down-to-earth concerns. By the third act, we have a full-blown reflection on the afterlife that’s far more poignant than I expected. The nostalgia is tinged with timeless commentary, with a charming performance by the “stage manager.” I discovered after watching the film that the original theatrical play by Thornton Wilder was (and probably is still) a popular choice for high school theatrical productions and I can see the appeal—from the metatheatrical addressing the audience to the surprisingly deep reflections on life and death. In fact, I’d be rather curious to attend a revival.