lchadbou-326-26592 Review of Young America

Young America (1932)

Several Affecting Scenes Of Boys' Friendship

[19 September 2013]

Borzage was not at the height of his powers when he made Young America, released the same year as After Tomorrow and A Farewell To Arms, but this tight little example of 30s social consciousness shows some of the special qualities he brought to most of his films. The opening is a bravura tracking shot that takes us down a hallway into a small town courtroom and right into the judge's chambers. Later this court will be the setting for an offbeat comedy scene in which a sassy drugstore owner(Spencer Tracy, the nominal star) shows disrespect for court procedure in front of the slouching, tousle-haired judge (an atypical Ralph Bellamy) This sequence gives an inkling of what the movie might have been had it been helmed by John Ford, also then at Fox, and originally assigned to the material. Borzage doesn't mind so much melodramatic contrivance, including an unconvincing happy end, but his touch stands out in two scenes: First where the two main boys (Tom Conlon and Borzage's nephew Raymond) break up their friendship because of the judge's sentencing, Second where the Conlon character visits the death bed of his old friend. These moments anticipate the pathos later mined by De Sica in his neo-realist Shoeshine, in a way a love story between two youths. The message encapsulated by Tracy's wife (Doris Kenyon): "I don't think there's such a thing as a bad boy" is obviously simplistic, but Borzage would go on to direct a more consistently effective youth drama, 1934's No Greater Glory.