Well, I finally got the chance to see this. It's not an easy movie to get a hold of. For several years, now, I had had only two movies outstanding in my quest to see all the Best Picture films, and this was one of them; the other is Wings. Netflix, usually a wonderful source, mysteriously refused to have either of them. Finally, a friend of mine simply *bought* me the two films. I got the chance to watch Cavalcade tonight.
Meh. I guess it's reasonably well made, for what it is. But I don't especially care for what it is. Exactly the kind of movie I don't care for, it's more a sequence of events rather than having any coherent plot. Rather a history lesson of the early 20th century, spun around the lives of two families (and to make that work, it sometimes gets rather contrived).
But I think what really harms the movie the most for me is simply when it was made. The movie covers the time frame of 1900-1933, the year the film came out. And if you make a movie like this in 1933, you are necessarily going to have a skewed view of history. We, the viewers, know '33 as the year Hitler came to power and set events in motion that would lead to perhaps the biggest event of the century: WWII. But the film, of course, doesn't know that yet, so when it makes a big deal out of the *Boer War*, it's pretty weird, and hard to get all worked up about it. Similarly, from the time of the movie-- and especially the *place* of the movie (it is a British film), I guess it made sense to have the death of Queen Victoria be a big deal, but as a modern American, I really was unable to shake off a profound feeling of "Who cares????" And you might expect that, again, from 1933, the Great Depression might get some coverage. But no. No time for a trivial little thing like the Great Depression, c'mon, we've gotta tell people all about the hell that was the *Boer War*!!! So I'm afraid this film really didn't do it for me. It wasn't awful, I wouldn't list it as the worst Best Picture (I've seen some I positively *hated*, and I didn't hate this). But it wasn't magnificent.
Meh. I guess it's reasonably well made, for what it is. But I don't especially care for what it is. Exactly the kind of movie I don't care for, it's more a sequence of events rather than having any coherent plot. Rather a history lesson of the early 20th century, spun around the lives of two families (and to make that work, it sometimes gets rather contrived).
But I think what really harms the movie the most for me is simply when it was made. The movie covers the time frame of 1900-1933, the year the film came out. And if you make a movie like this in 1933, you are necessarily going to have a skewed view of history. We, the viewers, know '33 as the year Hitler came to power and set events in motion that would lead to perhaps the biggest event of the century: WWII. But the film, of course, doesn't know that yet, so when it makes a big deal out of the *Boer War*, it's pretty weird, and hard to get all worked up about it. Similarly, from the time of the movie-- and especially the *place* of the movie (it is a British film), I guess it made sense to have the death of Queen Victoria be a big deal, but as a modern American, I really was unable to shake off a profound feeling of "Who cares????" And you might expect that, again, from 1933, the Great Depression might get some coverage. But no. No time for a trivial little thing like the Great Depression, c'mon, we've gotta tell people all about the hell that was the *Boer War*!!! So I'm afraid this film really didn't do it for me. It wasn't awful, I wouldn't list it as the worst Best Picture (I've seen some I positively *hated*, and I didn't hate this). But it wasn't magnificent.