Happy 90th birthday Doris Day! Here’s a great subversive comedy of hers that falls under the category of Finding Your Voice or The Power of One. It’s called It Happened to Jane, and it’s about a single mom/entrepreneur who goes all out to fight a nasty corporation and rallies her entire town around her to boycott the company. Her chutzpah inspires an insecure Jack Lemmon to follow her lead and find his own courage to stand up for himself. Oh sure, she looks wholesome and sweet as pie, but don’t. mess. with. Jane. Or Doris Day, animal rights advocate.
Category Archives: Power of One movies
Stowaway with Shirley Temple, a Power of One Movie
Stowaway (1936)
Stars: Shirley Temple, Robert Young, Alice Faye
Director: William A. Seiter
Writers: William M. Conselman, Samuel G. Engel, Nat Perrin, Arthur Sheekman
Back in the Depression, Shirley Temple was rekindling feelings of hope in the hearts of people in movie theaters everywhere. With her 56 pin curls, adorable dimples, and perfect pout, she tapped her way into people’s hearts and convinced them that recovery was just around the corner and, meanwhile, why not celebrate what you’ve got? Cue the big band and fumble for your handkerchief, because doggone it, you’re gonna get a little misty even as you smile at her antics.
Like most of the movies in the Shirley Temple oeuvre, this one finds her orphaned, which of course allows those lost souls who become enchanted by her to adopt the precocious urchin—although not before several plot twists threaten her happiness and cause a big teary scene in which she declares she will be brave, by golly, she will.
In Stowaway, a stranger on the street, wealthy playboy Tom Randall (Robert Young), happens across Barbara “Ching-Ching” Stewart (our Shirley) in Shanghai, where she’s been stranded far away from her missionary guardians and robbed in her sleep. Having a purse of coins nicked is the worst that happens to Ching-Ching, because revolution, human trafficking, and exploitation of the innocent just don’t exist in this corner of reality. Shirley is magically whisked away into Tom’s shipboard world, where she gets a chance to sing, dance, do vaudevillian routines, and spout appropriate Chinese proverbs to remind everyone to be philosophical about the fickleness of fate. And of course, she also gets to look swell in an array of silk Chinese-inspired lounging outfits.
Ching-Ching rights all wrongs and brings out the responsible side of a ne’er-do-well and the adventurous side of a woman hitched to a cold-hearted fiancé. The rich learn that money isn’t everything and begin to spread the wealth. The greedy lose that which they most want to possess. The poor are rescued from poverty. Yes, the spirited, talented, relentlessly optimistic Shirley not only heals troubled souls, she single-handedly creates a system of economic parity within free-market capitalism. Quick, somebody elect that girl president!
When you need an infusion of positivity to fuel your ability to keep your sunny side up, indulge in a rainy day matinee of Stowaway and remember to S-M-I-L-E.
The Power of One Movie: Gandhi with Ben Kingsley
The Power of One Movie
Cinematherapy for When You’re Feeling Cynical
Gandhi (1982)
Stars: Ben Kingsley
Director: Richard Attenborough
Writer: John Briley
Thanks to this movie, Gandhi was “the man” back in ’82. As Martin Sheen said, “Everyone in Hollywood wanted to be just like Gandhi—thin, tan, and moral.”
This epic movie presents Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) as a moral beacon in the darkness of colonialism, the simple voice of reason and integrity that falls on the deaf ears of a bunch of white guys in fussy uniforms whose civilized exterior belies their potential for cruelty due to a bloated sense of entitlement. While riding a train one day, Gandhi is thrown from the naivete of privilege into the dingy reality of prejudice and realizes he’s got to use his newly earned law degree to help his fellow Indians. Ovr the coruse of several decades, he manages to unite Hindus and Muslims against the tyranny of the British, whose façade of politeness is quickly shattered when their subjects stop bowing to them. One look at the British officers whacking he heads and shoulders of hundreds of quietly protesting Indian men in order to bully them into submission and it’s clear that maintaining oppression requires a high level of denial or the admission that shiny boots and clipped mustaches aside, you’re just another thug. Gandhi’s protests may have required more years and more bloodshed on his side’s part than he had hoped, and his coalition may have fallen apart quickly after his death, but his message of human dignity triumphing over the lust for power is enough to keep us hopeful even when it’s clear that yet another regime didn’t get the memo and the same old battles for human rights have to be fought all over again in some other corner of the world.
If you’re feeling cynical, insignificant, and in need of some can-do spirit, check out Gandhi and see if it doesn’t get you off the couch and raring to make a difference in the world.
When you’re feeling cynical and insignificant, watch Gandhi, a Power of One movie, for cinematherapy.
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”—Ben Kingsley as Gandhi
Cinematherapy for When You’re Feeling Bullied and Pressured to Conform: 12 Angry Men
At home alone, looking to be inspired? Try a POWER OF ONE Movie. Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, you can catch 12 Angry Men. Here’s a Cinematherapy take:
12 Angry Men (1957)
Stars: Henry Fonda, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, John Savoca, plus another five angry men to round it out
Director: Sidney Lumet
Writer: Reginald Rose
This classic courtroom portrays just how hard it can be to achieve justice when the deciders are locked in a claustrophobic jury room on a muggy summer day, with a broken fan that serves as a reminder of how the inconveniences of life can render us prisoners of our lower selves. Let’s face it: It’s hard to be patient and compassionate when you schvitzed through your starched white collar shirt and tie before you even got out of the courtroom. Clearly, this jury could’ve used some tank tops and muscle shirts along with ice water and racial and gender diversity, but then, it’s a story set in an era when 12 white men in suits weighing whether a poor Hispanic kid would be found guilty of knifing someone wouldn’t make a judge blink.
Unbeknownst to the defendant (John Savoca), he is within a whisper of being sentenced to the gallows because of the frustrations of a bunch of fellows longing for casual Friday wear and a decent ventilation and a/c system. Fortunately, one man—juror number 8 (Henry Fonda)—isn’t willing to ditch his duty for a quick escape. Despite his fellow jurors’ flaring tempers, racist speeches, and impatience with logic and facts, juror number 8 insists on exploring the evidence and testimony in further detail. As the afternoon wears on, we recognize that each man has an insight rooted in his personal experience which, collectively, will flesh out the picture of what happened that fatal night and allow the truth to emerge. But will the desperate need for a cold drink and a gentle breeze thwart juror 8’s efforts to bring out the best in his fellow anonymous peers?
When you’re feeling under pressure to cave in to the majority, 12 Angry Men is a refreshing reminder that democracy doesn’t mean the bullies get to rule and the quiet guys have to conform. Its eloquent portrayal of acting from courage and conscious will inspire you to believe that you, too, can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, to quote Kipling, simply because their Arrid solid stopped working.
–Nancy Peske
Cinematherapy for when you’re feeling bullied: 12 Angry Men is a Power of One movie
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