Occasionally marketed as a 'Christmas movie', this film has very little to do with Christmas, except that children can watch it. It was one of only two films written and directed by North Carolinian Alexander Johnston, who died immediately after it was finished, aged only 41. The film is set in Thomasville, North Carolina, in 1950, and much of it is clearly derived from real experiences. Although the film starts slowly and the first few minutes are unexciting, once the film is into its stride, it takes off due to the honesty and integrity of the director, and the marvellous performances he elicits from the two boys whose childhood friendship is portrayed, Cody Newton and Michael Welch. There is a small role for Cody's sister played very well by Lindsey Good, of whom we do not see enough, because she is always in bed with polio. The film is based upon the absolute reign of terror of the polio epidemics in America in the early 1950s, when it was not realized that the virus was transmitted by water, and many children died from it without anyone knowing how they even got the disease. How everything was transformed by the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk later in the decade! The horror and fear were defeated, and terrible stories like this could no longer happen in the Western world. People who were not alive in 1950 cannot possibly imagine the hysteria and terror inspired by polio in America, and how it effected the movements and activities of every child in the country. This is all well documented in this film, and should be required viewing for social and medical historians. Diana Scarwid is wonderful as the hopelessly depressed alcoholic mother of Cody Newton in this bittersweet drama. The story turns on the polio-stricken little girl Sandy's obsession with angels, and her wish for an 'angel doll'. Her brother wishes to buy one for her but cannot find one, then his money is stolen by another boy, but his friend gives him his own money, and the search for the angel doll continues. A friendly black family come to the rescue, and the mother turns an ordinary doll into an angel doll for them. Everything about this charming film, narrated by Keith Carradine who plays the grown-up Michael Welch and remembers what happened in his youth, is delightful, fresh and natural. Really there ought to be more uncomplicated movies like this, which have a point but lack all affectation. Scoffers and sceptics and cynics beware, you watch an honest film like this at your peril!
