Ever wondered what Downton Abbey would look like if it had been made in the 1930s? That's Cavalcade in a nutshell, aka Oscar Best Picture winner #6. Two English families, one wealthy, one working class, live through the defining moments of the early 20th century. The wealthy family has two sons, the working class a daughter. As the story opens, the working class family are servants to the wealthy, but they eventually move out on their own. Both fathers fight in the Boer War, and both mourn the death of Queen Victoria with equal sadness at the passing of an era. The working class father becomes a drunkard and is eventually killed by being run over by a carriage. The kids grow up; one of the wealthy sons dies on the Titanic on his honeymoon (of course), the younger falls in love with the working class daughter (who has become an actress and a singer) and they have an affair all through WWI, but before they can decide whether to surmount the social barriers between them and marry he is killed on the day the Armistice is signed. We then fast forward to the "present," 1933, as the movie looks back on all the social changes the century has seen and wonders whether the future holds peace.
The irony. You people have no idea what's waiting down the road.
So yeah, it's basically Downton Abbey, including all the tragic deaths, if it were made in the 1930s with the benefit of living-memory hindsight instead of looking back a century. It's also probably the second-most entertaining of the Oscar winners thus far barring Wings. The silent film, the very first Oscar winner, still remains at the top of our list.
Watched: June 22, 2017
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