Posted by DWPC (A) on December 12, 2007 at 16:36:57

In Reply to: RE: I wondered why they've been running on cable this week posted by Tom Brennan on December 12, 2007 at 16:05:55

I agree. And cynicism infects everything. Good and strong characters must be cut down to size with personal defects so the audience is conditioned to see that people are flawed. The public accepts this as "truth", but in fact its only Hollywood showing how little it thinks of them.

There's a scene in "Drums Along the Mohawk" where Henry Fonda walks away from a barn dance alone and Claudette Colbert (his wife) covertly follows...to find him doting on their sleeping infant. As I watched it I thought how that scene could never appear in a movie now...he'd be found doing something questionable and the audience would accept it.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy - WB Yeats