Pollyanna (1960)

In the interest of coping with a dark time, I picked the most famously optimistic movie I could think of. OK, all I really knew about it was the reputation of the title character.

The movie deviates a little from the book's setting and doesn't indicate the state or year, but it appears to be New England in the early 1900s. Preteen Pollyanna Whittier (Hayley Mills in her Disney debut) is moderately fortunate for an orphan in that she gets to live in the mansion of her Aunt Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman), but lest you think it a dream come true, the aunt is bigger on making sure the niece acts like a lady than on loving or spoiling her. Furthermore, Polly is effectively the town matriarch, which may explain the local prevalence of bitterness and hostility. But Pollyanna has embraced her late father's insistence on looking on the bright side, and she shows it to everyone she meets.

Let's get a few things clear: Pollyanna is not quixotic. She does not see goodness where it doesn't exist, nor does she completely ignore the bad things in life. Sometimes she has to think hard about what to say for "The Glad Game," which isn't much of a game. She isn't constantly happy; indeed, the first time we see her, she looks uncomfortably uncertain about her new hometown for several minutes. And as the climax demonstrates, she isn't depression-proof. But that moment comes in handy for proving the benefits of her usual approach: What goes around comes around.

If you haven't watched yet, or at least since you were a kid, you probably assume that this is typical unrealistic Disney whimsy. Well, it may be to a point, but it sure feels familiar. I know a fair number of unneighborly cranks in the modern world, even if they haven't quite reached the extremes of reclusive, child-scaring Mr. Pendergast (Adolphe Menjou) or carping, bedridden, self-pitying Mrs. Snow (Agnes Moorehead). Both the real people and the characters would need a while to stop finding a sunshiny attitude annoying, and their personalities wouldn't utterly transform overnight. Nor is it a stretch to imagine the insincere charity and overreaching intervention of Polly, the ineffectuality of Mayor Warren (Donald Crisp), or the money-driven moral compromise of Rev. Ford (Karl Malden). And it's not like Pollyanna is the only non-grouch in town; there's playful orphan Jimmy Bean (Kevin Corcoran), for instance. Even Polly's never played to the hilt like I expected.

About the reverend: Yes, there's a pretty strong religious element. Pollyanna's parents were missionaries, after all, and pointed out to her that for all the Bible's gloomy verses, it also has no shortage of calls to rejoice. Nobody appears to deny theism, and only briefly does anyone express doubt of God's glory. On that basis, Disney could hardly dare remake this movie today.

Maybe that's just as well, because Pollyanna is still fine as it is. What it might lack in intellectual nuance, it makes up for in heart. And it inspires hope in me even today.