Right or Wrong? (Making Moral Decisions)

[StevePulaski]

Right or Wrong? (Making Moral Decisions) (1951)
Directed by: Judson T. Landis

A young boy named Harry is interrogated after causing trouble in the Coronet short film Right or Wrong? (Making Moral Decisions).

Rating: ★★½

If nothing else, the Coronet Instructional Films short Right or Wrong? (Making Moral Decisions) brings a keenly subversive style to instructional videos, offering an incomplete short so that the bulk of the weight is left on the audience in terms of judging the main characters' decisions and overseeing the ultimate fate of its lead character. The short's story revolves around a young boy named Harry, who is caught by a shopowner for throwing rocks at his storefront with a group of friends. Being that the shopowner only knows Harry, he informs local law enforcement that he was the one doing the vandalizing, leaving the remainder of the boys still at large.

Right or Wrong? focuses on the police's efforts to bring Harry to justice. During the course of the ten minute film, we often stop and hear the eternal thoughts of the characters before they make a certain decision. For example, we hear the shopowner's mind race as he contemplates whether or not to notify the police about Harry, who's father is a good friend of his, or hopefully cease this kind of behavior from the youth by getting the police involved. When the police finally show up on Harry's doorstep, his mother goes through a mental debacle of whether or not to let the police inside the home, contemplating saying Harry isn't home.

These kinds of situations make us active moviegoers, which is a plus for a company as basic and thoroughly unremarkable in its moralist ways like Coronet Films so often is. Right or Wrong? actually forces us to construct some of the pieces of the puzzle ourselves rather than have it handed to us. On top of that, this is actually a grittier short than many of their other ones, willing to showcase such relatable circumstances for young kids, such as sticking by your friends and remaining loyal to them despite quietly repressing your more moral, realistic side. Right of Wrong? (Making Moral Decisions) may have the kind of squareness that most Coronet films have, but it refreshingly subverts its style for something more memorable than most of its predecessors.

Directed by: Judson T. Landis.