La Vie de Thomas Edison

You don't see these kind of old-fashioned biographies anymore. There have been very few in the last 40 years. Yes, many of the classic biographies sugar-coated the stories, ignoring a person's negative traits, but today's films mostly do the opposite, so it's nice to re-visit a movie in which an American hero is shown as just that. One gets tired of all the trashing.

Thomas Alva Edison certainly was a hero with his incredible inventions (i.e., the light bulb) which affected almost everyone on the planet to a significant degree. This movie goes to great lengths to show Edison's persistence in reaching his goals while also highlighting the dedication of the men who worked for him.

Spencer Tracy as Edison, along with Rita Johnson, Lynne Overman, Charles Coburn, Gene Lockhart, Henry Travers and Felix Bressart make this a pretty solid movie. It's not spectacular, probably not worth more than one look, maybe two, but it's a story that should be seen about an amazing period in history.