Hobson’s Choice

Revisiting (here’s the original post quoted below)  because my son recently watched it – I sense a David Lean list is future:

However great the performances are, though, it’s really not those that convince me of Lean’s greatness. No, this is a stage play, and having gone through Hitchcock’s filmography recently, I know it when a stage play is filmed poorly (poor Juno and the Paycock, I’m never going to let that one go). I had no idea this was filmed on a stage play before I started it, only learning of its origins afterwards as I read up on it. Thinking over the action that largely focuses on three sets (Hobson’s shop, Willie’s shop, and the local inn), it makes sense that it could have started as life in a theater, but the movie never feels like it.

Then Hobson’s Choice. What a wonderful movie. I’d seen it long ago, when – perhaps a few of you remember – some PBS stations would run Janus Films on Saturday nights. Anyway, although some regular television stations ran older films late night or on weekends and the networks still broadcast made-for-theater movies (NBC Monday Night at the Movies!), what they showed was very mainstream, of course. By the time I was in high school, cable had come into our world – WTBS and WGN mostly, in those early days, and they showed movies. But never any art house or foreign films.

So….those Saturday night Janus Films on the Knoxville PBS stations …that was where I first saw Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, The Four Hundred Blows, M,  La Strada, Metropolis and so many others.

Here’s a contemporary article about PBS purchasing the rights to broadcast these films. 

And yes, Janus Films still exists as a rightsholder and distributor.

And oh yes, Hobson’s Choice. The only place it was streaming was through HBOMax, so I grabbed a 7-day free trial (remind me to cancel it on Tuesday, will you?) and got it rolling.

Based on an early 20th century play, starring Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie and John Mills and of course directed by David Lean, it’s a marvelous, easy comedy with a strong female lead and a charming love story based, initially, not on passion or even initially much attraction – but built on mutual respect (and, okay,  a little fear) and partnership. John Mills bracing himself for his wedding night – and the transformation that comes the morning after – is very funny and illustrative of how to express true things about sex and marriage in subtle, artful – and comedic – ways.