The film is told from the point of view of son George. Dad Dan was a bandleader, and because he had written a hit song, the family lived well and belonged to the upper class. Dad's hit song is called "My One and Only".
This song was written by Dad to Mom, but ironically, Dad cheated.
Mama Ann is a very decent high society woman. She came back from out of town early and found that her husband was topless and the mistress was lying on her bed. She immediately said she wanted a divorce and started packing.
An was very angry, but instead of scolding Xiaosan, she helped Xiaosan zip up her skirt.
Ann is the kind of person who has no worries about food and clothing, and also has high requirements for the quality of life. She doesn't know that this society is so unfriendly to women, or that it would be so difficult for women to survive in society without a husband.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she went to the bank to withdraw her money and tossed the wedding ring in the safe.
She is not a competent mother. She doesn't even know that her son has changed schools, and she even went to the original school to pick up her son.
After receiving her son, she asked him to take cash to the car dealership to buy a car. The car dealer almost thought her son was a thief who had stolen so much cash and wanted to call the police to arrest him. She came to the car shop, pretended to haggle, and bought the car.
She can drive, but in order to maintain grace, she insists that her son George do the driving. And this is the first time George touches the steering wheel.
She has two sons. The eldest son, Robbie, likes acting and embroidery, and his movements are more "mother". At that time, society discriminated against such people, but Ann didn't think it was anything. Robbie often matches her clothes, and she praises Robbie for his good eyesight.
The youngest son, George, is a "normal" person, more restrained, and he is the most reliable of the three. Ann left New York and took her son to a different city. Her initial idea was to find another man to marry so that she could settle down.
However, it was not easy for a woman with two children to remarry at that time. They first went to Boston, where she met the man who had proposed to her before. She tried to establish a connection with this person, but did not expect that this person just wanted to ask her to borrow money, and, in the end, stole her wallet.
Boston was the first stop out of New York, she still had some money and she was sure she would soon find a new husband. So they checked into high-end hotels. George reminded her to save money, but she didn't listen.
Now that the wallet has been stolen, it really makes things worse.
However, at this time she met another man, a soldier. (Interlude, this actor also played the cheating male protagonist in the American TV series The Good Wife...) They have met before. The soldier rescued An Fu as the hotel staff chased after the meal she had just dated with the man who stole her wallet.
Naturally, she and the soldier came together. It has come to the point of talking about marriage, but this man is too domineering to his son, so she resolutely left this man and left Boston.
The incident that ignited the flames of conflict between them was that the man gave An a sum of money to buy some wedding supplies. But while visiting the mall, they donated money to those in need. Ann went back and told the man about it. The man took anger at George, and Ann left the scene in anger in order to protect George. Before leaving, I threw back the necklace that the man gave me.
This scene was very cool to watch, but it was also very distressing for An. I thought I had found someone worthy of my life, but I didn't expect that it was just a cage for myself.
Next stop is Pittsburgh.
They have no money, and despite driving such a nice car, they can only live in apartments surrounded by working class people. Here, Ann met some men again, but those men just wanted to play with her and were very disrespectful to her. While waiting for a man to let go of his pigeons, she was caught by police fishing and law enforcement, accused her of engaging in sexual service, and was taken to jail.
She was helpless and called her ex-husband Dan, but Dan was on tour and was very noisy and didn't say anything at the end.
Neighbors bail her out of the police station. Those so-called upper classes, dressed like gentlemen, are actually very dirty. While the working-class neighbor was dressed in plain clothes, he displayed a true gentlemanly quality.
George had always wanted to go back to New York, to go back to his dad. It just so happened that Dad's band was on tour in the same city, and he went to find Dad.
But after seeing his father, he was disappointed. He also seemed to understand why Mom would rather starve and freeze than go back to Dad. Mom loves him and his brother very much. Although she is not a good mother, she is still trying to learn how to raise and love her children. Even if there is a problem between her and Dan, when George complains about his father, she will still tell the child that his father is good, so that the child will not hate his father.
The neighbor's sister and George have a bit of a relationship, but before anything happens, they're moving again.
Next stop is St. Louis, Aunt Hope's house. Aunt Hope has no children and no mother is beautiful and decent. Aunt Hope is married to Uncle Tom, a typical middle-class or lower-middle class. Aunt Hope's name means "hope", but her life is full of hope. Aunt Hope has always been very jealous of her mother, and she has a lot of complaints against her. Her mother said that she will never go to Aunt Hope unless it is absolutely necessary. Now they really have no choice but to rely on Aunt Hope.
Here, Ann looked for a job. She worked as a waiter in a restaurant, and she was so busy that she had to be wiped by a stinky man. How could she endure such a thing, and poured hot coffee into the crotch of the man who took advantage of it. Of course, she was also fired.
But who said it wasn't a good thing? She was fired from the restaurant and, by chance, was hired by a paint shop. She works as a sales clerk in a paint shop. With her outstanding appearance and in-depth understanding of color matching, she helped the paint shop to increase the turnover several times at once.
Not only did she get a job, but she also got a perfect-looking husband, the owner of a paint shop.
Everything seems to be getting better.
An and the paint shop owner held a "wedding" - in fact, a small gathering in the wild. The paint shop owner was giving a congratulatory speech when a woman came from a distance, and this woman was his wife.
This paint shop owner has a mental problem, and their family runs a chain of paint shops. To keep him from idling, the family sent him to inspect a chain store in this remote location. He has done the same thing before, having 11 similar marriages. The family will compensate women like Ann.
Ann's marriage dream was shattered again.
She decided to move again, this time to Los Angeles. Because Robbie has always liked acting, my mother wanted to take Robbie to Hollywood.
But George didn't want to go. George made friends at the school here, and his teacher praised him for his writing talent, and he wanted to stay here. But my mother insisted on leaving. He had an argument with his mother, and then on this rainy night, her mother took his brother away, leaving him here with Aunt Hope.
Of course, George has reasons not to go with his mother, but I think George wants more attention from his mother. Why does Robbie like acting, you have to take him to Hollywood, and I like writing, so you won't stay for me?
Growing up, his mother didn't know what he liked. His favorite book, and he mentioned it many times along the way, but Mom still didn't know it, and Mom didn't care. He felt slighted.
Of course, George didn't expect that his mother would really stay behind and leave with his brother. What a stubborn woman!
But, of course, Mom didn't just leave him in St. Louis. Mom gave all the money the paint shop family paid her to Aunt Hope, and the money was used for George's expenses.
That's when Mom and Robbie got robbed on the way to Hollywood and called St. Louis, and George only found out after Uncle Tom mentioned that there was such a sum of money.
He asked Aunt Hope to get the money back, catching up with his mother and brother. The three came to Hollywood together.
Dan came to see Ann when they lived in Hollywood. Dan had thought that Ann was playing a temper, and that it was time to go home with him after so long. But Ann has decided to stay in Hollywood.
Ann said, I don't know if I still love you, but I know I don't need you anymore. Only then did Dan realize that Ann was serious.
It didn't take long for Ann to hear that Dan had died of a heart attack. George flew back to New York for his father's funeral. A very good school offered him a full scholarship, so he stayed in New York to continue his studies.
In the end, George became an actor, and Robbie realized that he was actually more suitable for designing and matching clothes. And my mother understands that life does not have to depend on a man. She is no longer the only one of a certain man, she is the only one of himself, the only one of his sons, and the three of them can live well.
The upper class women in the 1950s and 1960s had a really deep obsession with decent. That's true of the film, and so is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
There were very few jobs available to women that year, and even married women were not allowed to work. So divorce is very expensive for women. This is also the reason why Ann has been thinking about remarriage after the divorce, because it is difficult for her to find a job with the same income other than finding another man to support herself.
Similar to Mrs. Maisel, they were both betrayed by their husbands, so they walked out of the marriage. After getting out of marriage, they have to face both the pressure of public opinion in society and the pressure of real life, and the whole environment does not provide them with a condition to be self-reliant. The only choice is to live in marriage with humiliation and burden.
The paint shop owner's wife was also a very decent woman. She asked Ann if she liked her husband very much, but Ann didn't like her at all, she just had to find a man. Ann asked the woman again, do you really like her? With a standard decent smile, the lady turned and walked away.
This scene is actually quite interesting, these are two different options.
This movie is a good ending at the end, but in real life, I don't know how many similar tragedies there are.
View more about My One and Only reviews
