‘Our Town’: The Nearly Unbearable Beauty of Life

Thornton Wilder’s play comes to the screen as a charming and sometimes funny tribute to ordinary people.

Emily Webb (Martha Scott) and George Gibbs (William Holden) live in "Our Town." United Artists

NR | 1h 30m | Drama | 1940

Human life is meaningful only when it’s relational. Only by treasuring life’s moments in togetherness do birth, aging, and death become worthwhile. That’s the point of director Sam Wood’s film, “Our Town” (1940), inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.