In a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain... and death... to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever - from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan's 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.
Direction
Meg Ryan's debut has unexpected restraint—she trusts silence.
Acting
Sam Shepard's drunk telegrapher steals every scene he's barely in.
Cinematography
Golden-hour California standing in for anywhere, 1942.
Director
Meg Ryan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Tom Hanks appears in exactly one scene as Homer's deceased father—filmed as a favor to his Sleepless in Seattle co-star.
Saroyan's novel was written in 1943 while he was literally working as a telegraph messenger; the film softens his existential dread into something more Capra-corn.
US
