Pros: Excellent acting; solid storyline, clothing and sets, music and hairstyles very evocative of 1930's/40's.
Cons: Dennis Quaid as male love interest is a bit too schmarmy; otherwise, no complaints
The Bottom Line: Japanese-American life in 1930's LA portrayed very straightforwardly; there's no excessive tear-jerking scenes; a great story, with excellent acting
This 1990 fim features Dennis Quaid as a yong American-Irish union organizer, Jack McGurn, a film projectionist by trade. He is constantly in trouble with his provocative speeches against the owners and capitalists. He is fired in Brooklyn, considers living with his brother and family, then decides to move to California under a new name. It's the 1930's Depression years, life is hard for the working classes - because work is hard to come by. By sheer luck, he finds a one-month job as a projectionist in a cinema in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. This small Japanese ghetto of Isei (born in Japan) and Nisei (born in USA) offspring is teeming with life - shops, theaters, gambling halls. It looks remarkably like our Chinatown in San Francisco, very bustling. Jack McGann - disgard that McGurn - is happy showing campy old Japanese films in this rundown theatre; he can even live in the bed upstairs with the film equipment.
He reminded me of myself: hearing the same songs from the same films day after day, he begins to sing along in Japanese, to the amusement of the owner's family. He's no great singer, and the pronunciation sounds terrible, but the family gets a laugh. Meanwhile, the daughter Lily, finished with high school, working as a seamstress, takes a shine to him, as he does to her. They're kissing on their first date, in a Chinese chopsuey restaurant.
Interracial marriage is illegal in California, so they elope to Seattle, where they get married by a Justice of the Peace, then crash another's wedding party, dancing the night away. Jack appears to have no family that cares for him - his first wife had run back to Ireland; her family is deadset against him as a nonJapanese, of low income.
She becomes pregnant, and he works in a cannery, a fishmasher - putting fish into cans. No surprise! He gets in trouble this time not from picketing, but defending the rights of others to picket, and winds up in jail with a broken arm. There he's rotting while Lily takes the small daughter back to her parens.
As all Americans know, Pearl Harbor's attack brings FDR's wrath on all Japanese-Americans; 128,000 of them in California were rounded up and "relocated" out in the deserts. Incidentally, FDR also tried to do the same in Hawaii, but about one-third of that population leaving would have destroyed the economy there. Congress blocked him.
Jack is given a choice: join the army or back to jail. He's in the army, while Lily, with her whole family, live in a camp in Montana (I think - not clear).
That's your basic story, but my own reaction was one of pleasant surprise: the acting is excellent in this film. The entire Japanese family, from grandparents down to the little half-Irish granddaughter, is exceptionally well-done. Everyone seems to be real, in their speech and behavior. The children are very Americanized - outspoken, lively, nothing like the traditional Japanese family. The mother is long-suffering and pretends not to speak English; the father longs for his homeland, wastes his time with buddies gambling.
Jack, as an awkward and bad-luck Irish-American, comes across as a real type of fellow, who cannot battle life well on his own. With no connections, family or money of his own, it's understandable that he started leaning so heavily to the left. And of course, to be Irish is to be a hothead, to read a lot, to know the laws, and to be outspoken when it's ill-advised. So his attraction to the calm and cool, sensitive and intelligent Lily, is clear; he needs someone who's not such a hothead as himself. She gets angry only once at his perpetual raging at labor injustice; her upbringing tells her to accept life as it is, not to rage so much.
For today's American viewer, surrounded by interracial marriage, these two together, especially in bed, is no shock at all. However, at the time, it would have been a serious shame for Jack, even before Pearl Harbor. As for Lily, it's a rebellion against her own people and culture. For the daugher, who matures during the film, it's a confusion. The three actresses who play the daughter are all very charming and calm.
THe issue of FDR's locking up American citizens is discussed, but the sargent answering Jack's outrage points out something worth considering: that the American people, who are now losing their sons, could be attacking anyone who looks Japanese on the streets. They may well have been better off in the camp for the wartime. I had myself heard that Chinese in San Francisco during the war were endlessly clarifying that they were not Japanese.
There is a soft-peddled happy end with the three reunited at the end. One can only hope that these two parents can find decent work and a good income after so much bad luck. Their troubles seem to be far from over - now neither has family to fall back on; Lily's father has died and their property is gone.
The camp scenes show a rough-and-ready life, with lots of dust and dirt and crowding, but certainly no lack of food or medical care. This is the best depiction I have seen of the WWII camps in USA aside from the original black/white photos. The calmness of the people is very striking, especially in their diligence in cleaning, cooking and gardening. It is hard to picture them as enemies, dangerous in any way. They're partying to big band music, dressed in 1940's clothes, extroverted and happy offspring against the older generation's quiet.
Was any of this necessary? One might well ask, now that 65 years have passed. And might it be necessary again? Well, your internet is there to give you the whole FDR story!
A very satisfying story; soft yellowish patina makes it perfect 1930's.
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