The Happy Years

At the turn of the twentieth century a boy his family cannot manage is sent to an American boarding school. John Humperdink Stover calls himself Dink, fights, breaks the rules and disrupts the school's order. The school does not break him; it works out how to use him without changing what he is. The film is not interested in discipline. It is interested in a boy finding his own measure: Dink is not the toughest but the most stubborn, and the football team is where he learns that. The film keeps the adults in the background. The form is MGM period production: Technicolor, campus, uniforms and a crowded cast of boys. Time passes through the seasons. William A. Wellman directed, from Owen Johnson's Lawrenceville stories. Wellman was known for hard films about men, and this stands unusually gentle in his filmography. Dean Stockwell plays Dink; he was among the child actors the studio worked hardest in those years, and this is one of his transitional roles. Who it is for: viewers who like classical-era school films and nostalgic American stories. Who it is not for: anyone after complexity. The film moves without event, its conflicts are small, and to modern eyes it stays far too innocent.