I'm not quite sure why I love George Stevens' I Remember Mama so much. It's a calm, quiet film about a Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco during the 1910s told from the point of view of the adolescent Katrin Hanson. The film is pure nostalgic melodrama, charting how the family copes with life, death, and finances under the loving yet stern rule of their matriarch Marta 'Mama' Hanson. Clocking in at over 130 minutes, I Remember Mama should have collapsed under the weight of its decentralized and blatantly sentimental plot. And yet, it doesn't. If I had to take a guess as to why, it wouldn't be the most obvious answers like Stevens' meticulous direction, Nicholas Musuraca's warm cinematography that covers the screen like a wooly blanket, or Irene Dunne's career-defining performance as 'Mama.' No, my answer would be the film's simple sincerity. I was choking back tears more than once at scenes that would have made me roll my eyes in lesser films: 'Mama' sneaking into a hospital to sing her youngest daughter a lullaby after an operation, 'Mama' giving Katrin an heirloom brooch after an unfortunate misunderstanding with a neighbor, the jovial uncle drinking one last toast with 'Mama' and his ostracized common law wife on his death-bed, and 'Mama' taking a huge risk to get Katrin's writing into the hands of a respected author. The melodrama isn't forced or insisted upon. Instead, it is presented plainly and earnestly. The resulting emotional response is undeniable.
7/10
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