Movie Review

Oral History: A Century of Living has as its stated organizing principle that all interviewees are at least a hundred years old and the "moments they remember" can teach us about life in the twentieth century. Setting such a broad agenda is almost certainly impossible to fulfill in fifty-seven minutes, and the film does not. What it does do well, however, is provide remarkable insights into the personal lives of Americans in the first third of this century, especially those of the female interviewees. The interviews are attractively interspersed with newsreel and film clips as well as photos from the interviewee's younger days.	1
The film's strengths and weaknesses reflect to some extent the inevitable dynamics of the interview process. Women outnumber men in the film's demographic, and such elderly interviewees often are more talkative about their youth than about recent experiences. Doubtless interview strategy played a part too, as the experiences related tend toward the personal and family rather than toward organizational activities or views of politics and religion. Unfortunately we learn little about the intent of the interviewers, as we hear their question in only a few cases.	2
We learn, for example, of initial encounters with the automobile: driving for the first time, trying to repair a Model T on the road, or navigating in an era before clearly marked highways. Similarly we hear powerful recollections of the 1918 influenza epidemic, of family members taking ill and dying, of a father nursing his wife and children to the point of exhaustion. These are moving, interesting recollections.	. . .