What Happens When Upwardly Mobile Couple Hits Hard Times

The 1930s were a heyday for screwball comedies, rowdy pictures where complications were piled onto complications, until the characters reached their breaking point, crazy stuff happened, hilarity ensued and moviegoers went home happy. In the Great Depression, filmmakers used broad comedy to touch on issues of class and poverty, but kept audiences enthralled with plenty of slapstick that always found some upper crust heel choking on their silver spoon.

Which is why if you’ve seen Made for Each Other—especially when it was first released in 1939—it can only be because you’re a Jimmy Stewart and/or Carole Lombard completist.

On December 12, 1939 producer David O. Selznick changed the course of Hollywood history when Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. It was the centerpiece of his filmic legacy and overshadowed Made for Each Other, a simple comedy that hit closer to home for many Americans: the upheaval on a young marriage brought on by personal finances…

Hollywood’s Great ‘Escape’ Plot

It’s conventional wisdom that during the Depression, people went to the movies, gathering together to escape the harsh realities by the communal fireplace. For a bit of spare change, folks could forget their troubles for a couple of hours.

Like most Hollywood tales, it involves a healthy dose of artistic license. Yes, movie theaters offered a welcome diversion, and 1930 was a hugely profitable year for the movie industry. But over the next four years, admissions were down by a third, some 8,000 theaters were shuttered…

Reels Getting Real in 2009

For now, at least, the recession hasn’t hurt your local Cineplex.

Compared to 2008, attendance is up 15 percent and the overall box office jumped 17 percent to nearly $2 billion.

But if the economy continues to worsen, will these numbers sustain themselves if movies are simply seen an excuse for checking out in air-conditioned bliss and don’t offer a reflection of our current woes?

Maybe “escape” is enough, but flicks steeped in economic realities can be a draw, too . Will any of this year’s movies confront or address the economic concerns of the day?

Yes, but not necessarily head-on. Here are a few of the upcoming releases that touch on the Recession—or at least the collective feelings of anxiety—through fantasy, comedy, singing, dancing and good old-fashioned demon fires from hell.

The Down-and-Out Show for Our Times

Forget the movies. If you want some good old recession-era fare, you better have kept your HBO. Flight of the Conchords is the only place to find company in the misery, set to escapist “smile on your brother” sing-a-longs like Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor).

When it first aired in 2007, FOTC seemed like the pinnacle of Williamsburg Brooklyn writ large: fake New Zealand rock stars, unlucky in love, parodying musical genres in nerdy glasses—with a creepy stalker to boot. Funny at times, yes, but also grating in its hipster smugness, more or less the pay-channel equivalent of a night out in Williamsburg.

That, however, was a short-sighted, knee-jerk reactionary view caused by an allergic reaction to ironic tee shirts.

This is what the FOTC is really all about: being broke in the big city. It’s a 21st-century Dickensian tale of poverty, only instead of begging and pick-pocketing, the urchins wear thrift-store short-shorts while jogging and steal cushions from the local library.