Cheers for Miss Bishop

Sigh. Feel-good old movies are supposed to make you feel good! This one didn't.

The problem was that until she was in her 70s Miss Bishop didn't realize that the love of her life, Sam, had been there the whole time. I think that we were supposed to feel happy because she more or less had had a husband in the form of a life-long companion--Sam. But I just ended up feeling sad--she more or less married her career (and was a darn-fine professor) and raised her niece (after Miss Bishop's sister had run off with Miss Bishop's fiance and then died in childbirth after he left her). So this just combined all of the things I hate in fiction: sisters interfering in each other's love lives and the protagonist not being aware of who it really is (and choosing him) who loves her. The film neither managed to be a defense of the single life, nor a tragedy of missed love: it just hovered somewhere in limbo in between.

I will say this, though, for the film: Edmund Gwenn was the president of the university, which is such a good role for him (quite similar to his role of older, inspiring professor friend in An Apartment for Peggy).


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