First of all, this is just so maudlin and dreary. My grandma would have called it "schmaltzy." And using the strong emotional reactions that people have about the troops to sell your product is unseemly at best. It's just really tacky.
But the really odd thing is the choice of music. The song that they play under the ad is "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" which most people know either as a church hymn or as the song Robert Mitchum sings in Night of the Hunter. So it's either kind of sacrilegious or creepy.
Night of the Hunter, by the way, is an underrated movie. You should give it a viewing if its on Netflix or Hulu or whatever. Kind of a sad story about this movie, it was the first feature directed by actor Charles Laughton. The reviews were so cruel that he never directed another. Which is a shame because the problems with this movie were in the script, not the direction. He actually does some pretty cool camera stuff with light and shadows and whatnot. Check out Roger Ebert's glowing review : http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-night-of-the-hunter-1955
I saw "Night of the Hunter" when I was young and it scared the bejesus out of me! Good movie. I think at the time, though, any association of religion (false or not) with evil was shocking to a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteI consider "Night of the Hunter" one of the better movies of all time. I never understood the criticism directed toward Laughton.
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