With the wistfulness of its sentimentality revved right up to "full-throttle", Our Town (from 1940) was a very starry-eyed and nostalgic look at the everyday comings and goings of the good citizens living in a quaint, little, New Hampshire town, set in the year 1910.
This was an idealistic, "Norman Rockwell" type of setting where nobody felt the need to lock their doors and everybody knew everyone else's business.
And even though, on the immediate surface, things appeared to be squeaky-clean and picture-postcard perfect, around every street corner there existed the underlying drama of family conflicts that inevitably came to light.
Far from being what I would consider to be great entertainment, Our Town (now 70+ years old) has definitely lost a lot of its initial charm and sentimental-edge due to these fast-paced days of jaded attitudes which we now live in - But, all the same, this film was a sensitive and fairly intriguing look at an "innocent" era in time that has long ago faded away, never to return.
Filmed in b&w (with a running time of 90 minutes), this fond reminiscence of yesteryear was based on Thorton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name.
