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University of Southern Califonia (student film)Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? (1958)

Imaginative film showing how automatic gadgets in homes and workplaces alienate people from one another.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: University of Southern Califonia (student film)
Sponsor: N/A
Audio/Visual: Sd, B&W
Keywords: Technology: Critiques; Automation; Consumerism

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: XDelusion - - June 25, 2006
Subject: Right on!
Everyone has free will, but with a little fear or compliance, and a bit of repetition we can be conditioned into about any routine, any frame of thought, any belief system, and any destructive social habits.
It would seem that up to this point, a human's will or free will and self awareness always falls secondary to man's will to by hypnotised!

Reviewer: Ryan Mast - - January 30, 2006
Subject: "Life is just a series of sensations, some to be desired, others to be avoided."
Many of the archived films on this site from this era are very obvious and direct in the message and filmmaking style. "Have I Told You" is quite unique for this era in its effective use of creative camera angles, rich irony, and silence.

Despite all of the modern conveniences, communication technology, transportation, and entertainment, the family is so dysfunctional that no device can help them or make them happier. They are surrounded with the best of their times (which makes for fascinating historical reference or video sampling), which gives them more opportunity than ever to interact with each other. Yet, they CHOOSE not to. Instead, each of them absorbs themself in some petty device, technology or entertainment -- the husband with his cigarette holder, the boy in the TV, and wife in all of her time-saving kitchen appliances.

The greatest irony of the film comes at the end, as the wife is watching TV, interspersed with shots of the husband eating his TV dinner. The couple on TV talk about how much they love each other, enjoy talking to each other, and how they feel safe together... while the husband and wife in the film coldly walk past each other. They have everything of their time, yet fall short of its idea.

Reviewer: Marysz - - January 12, 2006
Subject: Life is Nothing but a Series of Sensations . . .
A bleak film about how the mechanized quality of everyday life diminishes human interactions. We follow a lonely family through their day, where dad, mom and son interact with clocks, cars, telephones, coffeepots, radio and television instead of each other. Have all these objects made their life so dismal, or do they simply amplify a sense of estrangement that was already there? The wifeÃÂs life seems the most desolate; sheÃÂs home alone all day with a dead-eyed son who does nothing but watch TV. SheÃÂs got health problems and takes a long drag on her cigarette as she talks to her doctor. The husband seems to have the best of it, at least he gets out of the house all day. But when he comes home, thereÃÂs nothing but a TV dinner for him; his wife is obviously too depressed to cook. Refreshingly for the fifties, the film doesnÃÂt blame the wife for the familyÃÂs predicament. SheÃÂs a victim of modern life like everybody else. And who knows? Maybe at one point, she got up and made her husbandÃÂs breakfast before he went to work and slaved over home-cooked meals. But with an unappreciative husband and son, she eventually gave up.

Reviewer: ERD - - November 28, 2005
Subject: Automation can alienate
This film warns that modern technology can isolate peeople. It goes to negative extremes. This film was made in 1958. We have advanced even more now, but plenty of people are still communicating. It's how you deal with things.

Reviewer: pottersclay75 - - August 22, 2005
Subject: Early Zombie Flick?
The folks are zombified! It is not that technology gets in the way of them communicating with one another, they simply choose not to. There were plenty of opportunities for interpersonal communication, but they seem to be in so much of a daze that they can't take advantage of them. If they were really this far gone, they would not be able to function.

This is a very grim look at technology and automation. Too much so. Its like the mom had a lobotomy!

I do like the final shot, however. **Possible Spoiler** The father's lighter does not work and he has to take out an old fashioned match to get his cigarette lit.

Very depressing and unrealistic.

Reviewer: Stoogie - - April 10, 2004
Subject: A swell film about a not so swell existance.
Odd, strangely depressing, weird.

I like this thing, whatever it is...

Reviewer: Spuzz - - September 22, 2003
Subject: Cold, heartless and fascnating.
A very odd and troubling film, which, on the surface seems to tell about how wonderful automation is in 1958 America. But, as time goes on, what it REALLY is about is how automation seems to have detached everyone from everyone else. Very little is said to one other directly. Whenever someone DOES say something to each other it's either a) through technology or b) not responded to at all. The Husband, Wife, and Child in the film never seem to converse to each other (except when the Mother tells the kid to go to bed, the kid doesnt answer, he just goes off).
Has technology led us to be robots in our normal social lives? Even at the end of the film, when the husband gets a cigarette from a gawdy cigarette carousel, he's not impressed with it at all, it's just there to give him a smoke.
It's a very peculiar subject, which is well documented in this film. This is a MUST SEE on this site, but be warned, it's not upbeat.

Reviewer: Steve Nordby - - September 11, 2003
Subject: Technology in modern life - the b/w version
Had Jacques Tati made American industrial film noir, it would look like this.

Shotlist

"Shows the modern family enslaved by automatic gadgets in homes and businesses. Family members go through the days with no real person-to-person contact because everything is done automatically. Emphasis is placed on life being more than just a robot existence."
Contains excellent breakfast scene: businessman awakened by alarm clock,
lets wife sleep as he makes own breakfast (cu coffee pot, waffles in
toaster, etc.), businessman backs his late 1950s Cadillac out of driveway;
great LA FREEWAY scenes (oddly, the background audio is a radio show
playing 1920s records; it's truly bizarre to hear a 20s record juxtaposed
with late 1950s LA Freeway traffic). Downtown Los Angeles. CU hand honking
automobile horn. Driver speaks on two-way car radio; pulls into below
ground parking garage. Much more; excellent "slice of life" late 1950s ftg.



Danger Lurks