JUST IN TIME FOR OPENING DAY...

We watched PRIDE OF THE YANKEES this weekend. What a great way to gear up for the start of baseball season. How come we had never seen this film? Not quite sure...Anyway, Gary Cooper is magnificent and TALL as Lou Gehrig. The film actually begins with a peculiar note from the director, about how Lou's story should serve as an inspiration to all patriotic Americans. There seemed to be some kind of war propaganda angle that I didn't quite understand.

Anyway, it was interesting to see a biopic from another era, considering the glut of these kinds of stories in current cinema. I found myself imagining how Lou's story would be told today, and I couldn't help but imagine that a contemporary filmmaker would feel compelled to focus more on Lou's tragic and grizzly physical demise. This film, though, spends most of its time just showing the audience what a great, pure, hard-working guy Lou was. No doubt there's a bit of revisionist history in there, as there is destined to be in all biopics, but it seemed like a very different way to tell a "true story" than we see today.