I’ve shown this movie to seniors in high school as a way to use film as text. The plot follows Campbell’s “Journey of the Hero” theory - not surprising, since Lucas was an anthropology student. (So does “Star Wars,” too.) In any case, Mr. O’Reilly’s experience does not reflect my experience with hundreds of teenagers, all of whom enjoyed the film, and some of whom loved it. My guess is that Bill spent a lot of time bloviating to the kids about what a great movie it is, and how that period of time was great to experience, and so forth, eventually sucking the life out of the enjoyment of the film... and as someone who was alive in 1962, there were good things (intact families) and awful things (segregation), and the great music in the film carefully passes over the crap music also produced at the same time.
I think the film is one of the great movies of all time, IMHO. Bill may be spinning his own projection here.
The good thing, intact families, outweighed the bad (segregation). which means that intact families were a priceless benefit to society. Even blacks still aspired to keep the family together, and even absent a lot of fathers, a black neighborhood was still a peaceful place.