Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

A movie depicting Depression life in 1934 Cincinnati, you'd expect to be, well, depressing, but I instead found it uplifting owing in part to the period music played throughout (e.g. "Side by Side".) The theater was packed with little kids, so rather than explore my adult reactions to Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, I've decided to go into its not insubstantial educational value to the young. The main character is ten-year-old Kit who wants to be a newspaper reporter, but there are three other concurrent themes: how one can rightly survive the hard times, the problem of absent fathers, and the vulnerability of hobos. Each of these four themes allows the movie to showcase a particular strength in a woman or a girl, and it's these four strengths, adaptable to various situations, that prove its educational value. I say that advisedly, however, because my adult readers will want to make up their own minds if the lessons are consistent with their values.

These four themes go back a ways, way back, before there were movies to portray them, before there were printing presses to popularize them, back to when they were written on scrolls—or perhaps even earlier for aural transmission. The words of a mysterious Agur a member of the North Arabian tribe of Massa were appended to the Proverbs of Solomon, preserved by the Jews in their sacred text, appropriated by Christians in their Bible, and eventually sneaked into movies ("Dan in Real Life" is another example). Because Agur's words don't have a religious content per se, I'm going to quote them here from the New Jewish Publication Society 2nd ed. of 1999 (NJPS) Tanakh as they seem to best fit "Kit Kittredge" and the Jewish concept of inward beauty in a wife. (Prov. 30:21-23)

"The earth shudders at three things,
At four which it cannot bear:
A slave who becomes king;
A scoundrel sated with food;
A loathsome woman who gets married;
A slave-girl who supplants her mistress."

"A slave who becomes king," we know today as affirmative action, but here it involves an attempt of a ten-year-old girl to bust into newspaper reporting. Before we look at her story, though, I need to lay to rest any concerns about the movie's handling of race.

Race is entirely a non-issue throughout. I speak as one who spent my five college years in Cincinnati at the turbulent end of the '60s. I'd have thought 1934 Cincinnati would give some indication of what was to come, but one couldn't tell from the movie.

The only high status adult occupations actually shown were the school teacher and the doctor who tended the (integrated) hobo camp, and they were one of one race, the other of another. The hired help was similarly mixed. Sure, you might think that a white girl living in a white neighborhood attending a white school would speak to segregation, but from a child's perspective the group that really mattered was the exclusive tree house club, and that was joyfully integrated by the end of the movie.

What I'm talking about is the opening scene where Kit skates into the Cincinnati Register building fully expecting to "come in a visitor and go out a journalist." Her newspaper contact Billy tells her, "You don't just waltz up to the editor and expect him to publish your article." No, the world just doesn't work that way, or as Agur put it, "The earth shudders, ... it cannot bear a slave who becomes king."

The editor for his part wants "something new, something fresh, something real," but Kit's story on the Chicago World's Fair was more of the same "sentimental slop" he was tired of. I admit that the kid had my sympathy, but then I got to thinking that if he published her because she was a cute ten-year-old white girl irrespective of the merit of her article, wouldn't that be a form of affirmative action based on age, race, and sex? Agur says that kind of thing disrupts society, but how could that be?

Well, in the movie their society was being disrupted by a hobo crime spree from Dayton to Hamilton to Cincinnati, from Warren to Columbus to Cleveland, and not only were a lot of hurting people having their lives disrupted, but the wrong hobo was about to be fingered. Without Kit's investigative reporting skills she was developing, that spree might never get solved, and without the incentive to get published, she might not have made all the effort it took.

The police were good, but they could only do so much. In fact the Cincinnati police are some of the best in the nation. I remember my own efforts at helping them solve a crime spree. A certain vending machine company was having its trucks robbed in broad daylight. Their truck was parked in front of the dorm while the driver was inside loading a machine just when I decided to go outside and mail a letter from the mailbox next to the truck. I got a good look at the guy with his crowbar breaking in, but all I could tell the police was his race and sex. I wouldn't even have been able to positively identify him. I rode with the police around the neighborhood but wasn't much help to them.

Now, Kit, when she witnessed a hobo's crime up close, she took note of his distinguishing features, writing in her notebook later to come in handy. She had something more to give the police than that it was a hobo, which is all anyone else saw. A good police force sometimes needs our help. Watch the crime scene, early in the movie, and see if you can notice what Kit saw.

Kit kept pounding away on the typewriter in frustration until it jammed. Do you remember mechanical typewriters? Pressing the keys moves these metal blocks on long arms up to strike the inked ribbon into the paper to impress their raised letters onto it. Sometimes two of them will get stuck together and can't retreat until you unjam them. Her dad gave her the sage advice, "Don't let it beat you, kid," which he applied to all kinds of obstacles he or she or anyone encounters. The movie gives us some still-shots of those jammed keys, which today would be called that mythical "glass ceiling" preventing a woman's advancement. The strong woman perseveres. I'm not going to say any more.

Agur's second lesson above has to do with "a scoundrel sated with food" being a disruption to society. The way the movie addresses this is to have various people spout their take on the concept and then show what actually takes place in action. A rich lady's husband says of the odd-job hobos who offer to work for food, "Let them go hungry; it's the only way to keep them out of town." Another saying is, "People who eat at soup kitchens are just hobos who feed off the government, and that's why we're in the Depression." Well off Uncle Hendricks warns, "Keep supporting the President's New Deal, and see what happens to the country." The poor are criticized for selling eggs, and we are told wearing a chicken feedsack dress is but one shameful step before the poorhouse. One of the crooks encourages a hobo to accept a $100 bribe so he can elevate himself to being a "respectable member of the community." And the storybook Robin Hood is lauded for "taking from the rich and giving to the poor."

In actual fact, as the movie scenes portray, the hobos working for food are honest workers, the soup kitchen takes care of the truly needy, we are all struggling with hard times together, selling eggs is an honorable endeavor, sack dresses are chic and save material, the hobos have their own community deserving of respect, and the would-be Robin Hoods were in fact "stealing from the rich, stealing from the poor, and keeping it." Even a young mind will reach the obvious conclusion of who was "a scoundrel sated with food."

While the police were competent as far as that goes, the crooks were bumbling idiots. One declares, "I'm not the numbskull you think I am," as he shows us otherwise. Another declares, "You don't hear me screaming!" as he continues to yell. The getaway driver can't drive. This group finds themselves easily manipulated by the children who for their part still need the gang moll to stand up to her male confederates in order to prevail.

The third Agur lesson about "a loathsome woman who gets married" is somewhat underdeveloped in "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl," which, I believe, is how it should be in a movie to educate children. They don't have to know too much about marriage just yet. If you want to see an adult treatment of the same subject, go see the movie Sex and the City.

All "Kit Kittredge" does in this regard is give us a side-by-side comparison of two families: Kit's and her school friend Lenny's who become boarders at their house. Both their fathers love their kids but have typical male problems communicating. Both fathers strike off to distant cities seeking work, promising to keep in touch. One of the mothers is portrayed sympathetically and the other not, especially from a child's perspective. If your child should ask why one of the fathers never came back, the best answer might be to point out that the mother didn't have such and such a character trait that would make him want to return, a trait that the woman with strength of character has. This isn't exactly current feminist dogma, but Agur was promoting the good of society as a whole, not just of women, and then we did have the lesson of the strong gang moll for balance.

The fourth Agur lesson: "A slave-girl who supplants her mistress," having to do with inheritance, is even less directly addressed here although it's easier to answer the question why after one of the "Three Musketeers" got sick and died, did the second musketeer go to such lengths to protect the interests of the littlest musketeer? Just say that it was a promise that should be kept even though it was made to someone now dead.

This fourth theme involved a need to hide something in plain sight. Sometimes the most appropriate strength for a woman is camouflage.

I found the movie touching, and I think the values it teaches well suited to most children, although you'll have to decide for yourself, so I gave you some elaboration to that end. If movies can teach "May the force be with you," perhaps we can let them throw in some more down-to-earth lessons too.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12