I Remember Mama **** (1948, Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oskar Homolka) – Classic Movie Review 7192

Director George Stevens’s warm-hearted 1948 black-and-white classic household drama I Remember Mama stars Oscar nominated Irene Dunne as careful Norwegian-born Mama, who struggles to make ends meet in turn-of-the-last-century San Francisco (it is around 1910).

Stevens’s tastefully mounted family drama provides generous helpings of laughter, warmth and touching sentiment, and every character quivers with life thanks to the full-bodied acting.

Richly entertaining and gracefully filmed on a large RKO Radio Pictures budget of $3,068,000, with lovely black-and-white cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca, it is an old-fashioned acting feast. The perennially undervalued star Dunne is perfect as Mama Hansen and the Oscar nominated Oscar [Oskar] Homolka steals all his scenes as the boisterous Uncle Chris, while Barbara Bel Geddes and Ellen Corby  are outstanding in their Oscar nominated supporting roles as Katrin and Aunt Trina.

DeWitt Bodeen’s screenplay is taken from John Van Druten’s play I Remember Mama, the stage version of Kathryn Forbes’s book of memoirs, Mama’s Bank Account.

I Remember Mama was nominated for five Oscars: Best Actress (Dunne), Best Actor (Homolka), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Bel Geddes), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Corby) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Nicholas Musuraca).

There were a lot of short main movies around at the time but this is sure not one of them – it runs an epic 135 minutes.

Dunne was nominated for five Oscars but never won. This was her fifth nomination, following Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937) and Love Affair (1939).

This was Viennese-born Homolka’s only Oscar nomination, so you can see a slight irony there with his first name. I remember him in Hitchcock’s Sabotage.

An infamous horror film played on its title: I Dismember Mama (1972).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7192

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