NOT A DRY EYE IN THE HOUSE

I have to confess I am a sucker for a sentimental movie. In the final scenes of the 1956 musical Carousel, Billy Bigelow (Gordon MacRae) has come down from Heaven for one day to comfort his poor widowed girlfriend Julie Jordan (Shirley Jones) and their ostracised daughter Louise (Susan Luckey). It is Louise’s high school graduation ceremony and the country doctor, the secret heavenly friend of Billy, after handing out the diplomas, recites an old verse about “When you walk through a storm” and Billy whispers words of love and encouragement to Julie and Louise, who are greatly heartened; Billy is then summoned back to Heaven to the swelling celestial strains of “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone”. I blubbed then when I first saw it as a tough 15-year-old, I have blubbed every time I have seen it since – probably at least 20 times – and I am blubbing now as I write this, my keyboard wet with tears. Yes, okay, I am a big girl's blouse!

My mawkish reaction to Carousel may be peculiar but the combination of drama and feelings of pity is an ancient skill. The classical Greeks wanted to achieve catharsis, a purging of the emotions, purifying the soul of the spectator. I do not know if the ancient Greeks burst into tears when they realised that Oedipus had killed his father or married his mother, just as the modern Greeks are weeping today when they are squeezed by the Eurozone with a tragically swingeing property tax. Feelings of pity for the unhappy Greeks are not much in evidence at Brussels or Berlin – we have yet to see wheel-chair bound German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble dabbing his eyes with a hankie.

Shakespeare does not much move us to pity (although Lear has several depressing enough moments) – mind you, his attempts at comedy are pretty limp too. The admiration of Sentiment came with the 18^th century Enlightenment, originally meaning that human feelings were often a route to the truth. Fairly quickly the idea degenerated into Sentimentality, the excessively emotional reaction to events. In the 19^th century such sentimentality was popular and met a human need. In Britain, a hard life for the great majority coupled with the buttoned-up tradition of the “stiff upper lip” required a safety-valve. Thus Dickens in 1841 reduced the nation here and across the Atlantic to tears with his heart-rending death-bed scene of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. The Italians loved their theatrics too, as illustrated by the ethnic domestic melodrama in New York portrayed in The Godfather. At a slightly higher level, they invited us to weep over “On with the motley” with the sob-wracked tenor in Pagliacci.

Back to Britain, the music halls could lay on the sentiment. The Coster’s Laureate, singer Albert Chevalier, tugged the heart-strings with his memorable “My Old Dutch” (not everybody knows, Duchess of Fife / Wife in Cockney rhyming slang). In the 20^th century, Harry Lauder was capable of reducing a packed Scottish theatre to tears with “Keep right on to the end of the Road” which resonated so piercingly after the losses of the Great War. This followed in a Scottish, Welsh and Irish traditional strain of loss and yearning – as in “Will ye no come back again?”, “The Minstrel Boy”, “My ain Folk” or “The Londonderry Air” – all songs to bring a lump to the throat.

Predictably politicians have tried to jump onto this bandwagon. Their problem was that they could not just leave their audience sobbing, there had to be a finale of uplift and inspiration. Mr Gladstone was said to have mastered this art and after horrifying his audience with accounts of the Bulgarian or Armenian atrocities, he sent them home determined to face the Turk or at least say a vehement prayer for God’s intervention at the local chapel. President Woodrow Wilson was, in H.L Mencken’s words, a master “of reducing all the difficulties of the hour to a few sonorous and unintelligible phrases, often with theological overtones… he knew how to arrest and enchant the boobery with words that were simply words, and nothing else. The vulgar like and respect that sort of balderdash….Woodrow knew how to conjure up such words. He knew how to make them glow, and weep. He wasted no time upon the heads of his dupes, but aimed directly at their ears, diaphragms and hearts.” Our contemporary politicians have lost this talent and if they weep themselves they become figures of fun – certainly a sobbing Ed Miliband or David Cameron may not be to many people’s taste.

The great store-house of sentimentality remains Hollywood. The Yiddish word Schmaltz well describes the worst excesses and Hollywood often tilts the level playing field by introducing lovable kids or cute dogs; Shirley Temple crooning “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in 1934’s Bright Eyes or Disney’s adorable 1961 Skye terrier in Greyfriars Bobby are cases in point. Much earlier, in 1921, Chaplin produced an unforgettable image of the Tramp with The Kid (Jacky Coogan) in the silent classic while the 1948 Bicycle Thieves directed by De Sica has a very affecting closing scene of father and son, a classic of Italian cinema. Frank Capra had a strong line in weepies with “It’s a Wonderful World” in 1946 giving James Stewart a chance to receive the heart-warming appreciation of his community. Greer Garson heroically nursed her amnesiac husband in 1942’s Random Harvest. But Greer was most effective in war-time Mrs Miniver, also 1942 – who can forget the sermon in the badly damaged church, after grievous village losses, and the congregation bravely singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” with the film closing with a V for Victory RAF fly-past over the stricken church.  Ah, what a warming confluence of pity, piety and patriotism!

With these emotional recollections, I will now curl up with Carousel and a large box of tissues.

SMD

23.11.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011