Pollyanna
Directed by David Swift
Written by David Swift from a novel by Eleanor H. Porter
1960/USA
Walt Disney Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Angelica: Glad this, glad that. Do you have to be glad about everything? What’s the matter with you, anyway?[/box]
“Pollyanna” is synonymous with saccharine sweetness. Haley Mills’s wonderful performance gives her a lot of spunk and provides for a good time.
It is sometime in late 19th Century America. Pollyanna (Mills) has been recently orphaned. Her father was a poor minister and she got her clothes and toys from the missionary boxes. Pollyanna was taught all her life to be glad for what she had and absorbed this lesson completely.
She arrives in the small town of Harrington to live with her rich spinster Aunt Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman). Aunt Polly cares only about appearances and her family honor. She has no room in her heart for love.
Pollyanna should be miserable. Instead her relentless gratitude changes the lives of everyone around her, including a fire-and-brimstone minister (Karl Malden), a child-hating old recluse (Adolphe Menjou), a bedridden hypochondriac (Agnes Moorehead) – and of course Aunt Polly. With Nancy Olson as a well-adjusted maid.
This isn’t a movie that I should like, but I loved it. There is enough humor and good acting to make the medicine go down nicely. It’s also nice to be reminded of the transformative power of gratitude. Recommended if this appeals even slightly.
Haley Mills won an Academy Award for the most outstanding juvenile performance of 1960.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZtJrzpHmUs
Clip – That’s Adolphe Menjou in his final performance
