Ah, Wilderness! (1935)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Co-produced and directed by Clarence Brown, with a screenplay by married couple Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett based on Eugene O'Neill's play, this above average comedy drama about family life just after the turn of the 20th century features a terrific cast that includes Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Aline MacMahon, Eric Linden, Cecilia Parker, Spring Byington, Mickey Rooney, Charley Grapewin, Frank Albertson, Edward Nugent, and Bonita Granville (among others). James Donlan, Tom Dugan, Eily Malyon, and Jed Prouty (among others) also appear, uncredited.Barrymore is the patriarch of the family, he runs the newspaper in small town America, 1906; Byington is his wife. Beery plays Byington's live-in brother who can't find a steady job per his drinking, MacMahon plays the family's cook (?) who maintains an "on again, off again" relationship with him. Albertson plays the oldest, college aged son, whose pal is played by Nugent. Rooney plays the youngest son who's younger than Mickey's 14 years, Granville is the only daughter. Linden plays the middle son, who's just graduated from high school along with his girlfriend Parker; Grapewin plays Parker's father.It's a coming of age story primarily focused on Linden's character, whose views on life are more liberal than those of his conservative family and in their community.Richard Miller (Linden) reads books that were considered racy, scandalous, or even subversive at the time: Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Swinburne's poetry, and political tomes about the oppressed working man. This makes him somewhat out of place in the idyllic community in which he lives where his father Nat (Barrymore) runs the local paper. Richard's mother Essie (Byington) has asked Nat to take their son's subversive reading materials away from him. Regardless, Richard is the valedictorian of his class, and he's told his girlfriend Muriel McComber that he's going to use his high school graduation speech to expose the capitalist ways he deems are wrong. Fortunately for Richard, Nat is on stage to hand out the diplomas and, after reading his son's speech beforehand, interrupts his son just in time, to keep him from making a fool of himself and upsetting virtually everyone else there. Richard's odd ways have already alienated Muriel's father (Grapewin), who forces his daughter to write a "Dear John" letter to her boyfriend after he reads the corruptive poems Richard had written her. He also cancels his ad in Nat's paper, which means a considerable financial loss for the Millers.Nat's ne'er do well brother Sid (Beery), who had left their town where everyone already knows him (for his drinking and reputation) to take a job in another town, returns in time for the town's annual Fourth of July celebration. Tommy (Rooney), and the rest of the town's preteen boys, have been setting off firecrackers all day. Sid keeps the fact that he's lost his job, for presumably the same reasons, a secret by hiding his luggage in the front bushes, at least temporarily.Sid enters the Miller home to charm Lily Davis (MacMahon), who'd promised to finally marry him if he'd sober up and hold a respectable job. But after an evening of celebrating with Nat, Sid returns drunk on beer to join the Millers for dinner. Malyon plays the Miller's maid Nora. Nat says that Sid will be staying, that he's offered his brother a job on his paper. Unfortunately, Granville, playing the Miller's only daughter Mildred, isn't given much to do in this film besides laugh at Sid's drunkenness or rib her brothers, especially Richard.After receiving Muriel's letter, Richard accepts Wint's invitation to go out on the town with him and a couple of 'fast' girls. Wint (Nugent) had come by to go out with Richard's older brother Art (Albertson), but Art had another date playing tennis instead. Richard then finds himself in a hotel bar with a much older floozie named Belle (Helen Flint), who with the help of the bartender (Dugan) and encouragement from another patron (Donlan), gets him drunk and "extorts" some money from him. Richard returns home drunk, much to Mildred's delight and their parents dismay.Later, Belle gives a note describing her evening with Richard to Nat's office mate (Prouty), which leads to father and son conversation about "the birds and the bees" after Richard had insisted that nothing had happened the woman. Belle's motivation had been to get the bar's license revoked for serving a minor, after she had been unceremoniously thrown out of the place.In the end, Richard makes up with Muriel whose father has decided (for some reason) that he's not such a bad kid after all.

MGM's adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's classic comedy about small time life benefits from a sturdy cast, especially Spring Byington and Lionel Barrymore. There is also Mickey Rooney who gives a delightful performance as a pre-adolescent son. But it is Wallace Beery, who plays the drifter uncle, that garners the most attention. Check out the dinner table scene where Berry's character stuffs the shellfish in his mouth. And don't miss the long drunk scene, which is brilliant. Despite the antics, it is a surprisingly restrained performance.Remade by MGM, as a musical called Summer Holiday, with Mickey Rooney in a more prominent role.

Eugene O'Neill's gentle nostalgic comedy got the full blown MGM treatment with Clarence Brown guiding a topflight cast in the standard interpretation of Ah Wilderness. My only complaint is that George M. Cohan who played the father of the Miller family did not repeat his role for the screen. Cohan could not/would not do the film and his loss was an opportunity for Lionel Barrymore who did the part with a sure hand.According to a book on the Barrymore dynasty, Lionel was upset with Louis B. Mayer for whom he was usually a loyal employee when Brown under Mayer's orders tilted the film and the billing toward Wallace Beery's showier part of Barrymore's alcoholic brother-in-law. Watch the two of them in scenes together as they try and top the other. It must have been one tense set. On stage Gene Lockhart did the part of Uncle Sid.The young protagonist about whom the action swirls is middle son Eric Linden. Barrymore does some creative interrupting at his son's valedictorian address filled with radical notions. Linden is rather clumsily courting Cecilia Parker and when she puts him off he goes out on one tremendous toot, taking his uncle Beery as a role model.If there was one thing Eugene O'Neill knew from this life it was alcohol and the effects thereof. Think about all the works he did where substance abuse is at the center. His greatest play, The Iceman Cometh is set entirely in a bar.Ah Wilderness is like the rest of O'Neill's works, no real plot to them, but deep character studies from a slice of life. Ah Wilderness being a comedy probably was easier to translate to the screen, even so the play which is set entirely in the Miller living room gets moved to the graduation and later to the tavern where Linden ties one on. On stage Elisha Cook, Jr. played the clumsy son.Mickey Rooney played young son Tommy in this version. Thirteen years later when he was the other side of too old for the part he played the Eric Linden role in a musical version Summer Holiday which proved that O'Neill should not be the basis for a musical even his only comedy.After 75 years, Ah Wilderness holds up very well and I think O'Neill probably approved of this version with the caveat that it had to conform to the Code. Helen Flint's part as a prostitute who gets Linden drunk and probably gives him a tumble was cleaned up by the Breen office. Given the code parameters, Ah Wilderness was as good as it could get.

This film is a veritable treasure for those who appreciate small-town Americana at the turn of the century. Set in New England in 1906, we see the plethora of events typical of the era: the high school graduation with individual seniors singing, reciting poetry and the valedictorian speech; the Fourth of July celebration with fireworks and picnics; the careful relationships between the young boys and girls; the close-knit family life with a sister and brother of the parents living with them. I thoroughly enjoyed Clarence Brown's depiction of this lost innocent era, which produced a warm glow within me as I watched. There are very few belly laughs - one I remember was when the protagonist Eric Linden says to his not-so-clever girl (Cecilia Parker) "I was born 100 years before my time" and she responds "I was born 10 days before mine." But I found myself smiling often at the goings on. Eric Linden carries the film beautifully.The rest of the cast is superb: Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington as Linden's parents; Mickey Rooney and Bonita Granville as his younger siblings; Aline MacMahon as Byinton's spinster sister and Wallace Beery as Barrymore's alcoholic brother. But I was particularly impressed with Helen Flint playing the vamp who Linden gets involved with when he was drowning his sorrows. The title, by the way, is a line from the poem "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám."