Just an awful movie
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johnfcorc — 16 years ago(May 29, 2009 02:27 PM)
I think the use of restoration is designed to emphasize that the new version "restores" what Welles presented to the studio (as best as can be gathered from his notes). But that's just semantics. I agree though with the exception of the opening long shot, which I think is a definite improvement, I have mixed feelings on the changes. I just brought it up because it is likely what Rosenbaum is most known for. But his criticism, while often controversial, is universally respected. And yes, he is an ideologue, but a Leftist one. (And no, to preempt the obvious questions, he does not praise the movie as some kind of "double bank shot.")
I think what makes My Son John more interesting than other anti-communist films is the director. And of course, that only matters if you believe in the auteur theory. -
bestactor — 16 years ago(June 20, 2009 05:35 PM)
I saw My Son John when it was broadcast on ABC many years ago. This was during the late '60s and anti-communism meant anti-war. I was far more drawn to Walker's character and performance. There also seemed to be hints of his character being homosexual. The anti-communist scare completely backfired on me.
Compared to the other anti-commie propaganda movies, this was high quality Hollywood. I believe most involved with this movie were ultimately embarrassed by its heavy handedness and fascist overtones. However, there can be no denying the slick Hollywood production values that put it in a pretty package.
There is no reason to keep this movie from being seen and studied. The cast makes it deserving of being available. The terribly racist overtones of other mainstream movies has never kept them out of view. We should not forget our movement toward fascism out of communist fear. -
dizexpat — 16 years ago(January 27, 2010 08:02 PM)
Why did they keep showing John when he was making phone calls
being inside a phone booth where you could never hear him?
Made me wonder if those scenes had also been pulled from an earlier film and the sound deleted as they were still to be shot when Robert Walker died.
Just a guess.
They Got Guns
We Got Guns
All God's Chillun' Got Guns! -
hobnob53 — 16 years ago(January 27, 2010 09:39 PM)
You're correct, dizexpat these weird scenes of Walker were culled from
Strangers on a Train
, the voice either left blank (as in the phone scenes) or dubbed in (as when he's gunned down in the cab). Plus an obvious body double for Walker's final scene in his office. Very poorly done.
Having seen this movie for the first time since I was in my teens in the late 60s, I must say that while I recalled its content pretty accurately, overall it's even worse than I remembered. The film is somber, downbeat, plodding, unimaginative when it's not utterly ludicrous, cliched, poorly directed, written even more badly, and just generally, unrelentingly grim and dull, dull, dull. Nothing entertaining about it at all. The climactic car chase, and the final scene in the auditorium, are totally asinine.
And a lot of good actors giving some of the worst performances, in admittedly near-moronic roles, in their careers. The characters are among the stupidest and most annoying ever drawn: the loopy mother having a nervous breakdown because she suspects her son is a Red; the zealous, fanatic father, combinig raging ignorance and religious fundamentalism with his job as a
schoolteacher!
; the dull FBI man, investigating what?; the family doctor, dispensing unneeded pills, combining quackery with religious fanaticism and pharmacological hocus-pocus; a grumpy and self-righteous boob of a priest; and a son who goes to pieces because of his crackpot mother. How could anyone perform such roles with any degree of seriousness and conviction? No one could take these one-dimensional stereotypes seriously.
No wonder this movie was an enormous box office disaster, even in 1952. Contrary to popular belief, explicitly anti-Communist films all flopped, even in the early 50s, mostly because they just weren't good, or at least entertaining. This film is simply too slow, too stupid, and way too much of a downer to be believed, let alone enjoyed. The obvious slapdash nature of the final 15 or 20 minutes (after Robert Walker died in real life and the whole ending had to be rewritten) just makes this mess look more amateurish, unbelievable and dumb as a box of rocks.
By contrast, the film TCM ran this evening (1/27/10) immediately after
My Son John
I Was a Communist for the F.B.I.
at least had the merits of being well-acted, fast-paced, never dull, and to be based, however loosely, on a real person and real events. It was watchable and enjoyable, however over-the-top it certainly was.
So before any of our friends on the right begin touting
My Son John
as a work of art, just bear in mind that a film's content or politics have nothing to do with whether it's any good. Several people have insisted this movie is good simply because it's an anti-Communist tract. However, it
is
possible for an anti-Communist film to be bad, just on its artistry, and as a piece of cinema,
My Son John
is superlatively awful. -
dizexpat — 16 years ago(January 27, 2010 09:44 PM)
One plot element that struck me:
How it is that Helen Hayes catches a plane to Washington, visits her son at work, goes to the park, chats with an FBI agent, finds the door that the mysterious key opens, catches a plane back, and manages to get home and have a nervous breakdown before her husband notices that she's been gone?
They Got Guns
We Got Guns
All God's Chillun' Got Guns! -
hobnob53 — 16 years ago(January 27, 2010 10:00 PM)
I guess we put that down to that age-old movie axiom,
suspension of disbelief
. Like Van Heflin's staged car accident. How could he know Dean Jagger wouldn't be watching the road, so that he could conveniently run into him?
I liked the FBI surveillance cameras at the Commie woman's apartment, strategically placed to catch close-ups of Helen Hayes wherever she happened to turn. If she had gone to the bathroom, I'm sure there would have been cameras shooting her from every angle planted in there. Talk about "My Son
John
"! -
fbm72751 — 13 years ago(May 06, 2012 08:40 PM)
I tend to agree,,it was not a good film,,definitly a letdown for Walker fans who had seen him in "Strangers on a Train" some months before this came out. I got the film almost entirely because it was Walker's last one.
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WalterDenton — 13 years ago(June 19, 2012 07:52 PM)
I think it should be made into a musical, it is a strange film, but has some comic moments-so quit trashing it, it's worth one watch-you also cannot judge it by today's standards, in 1952, most Americans were patriotic and went to church, so the attitudes of the parents are not that far off the mark-it just bugs some modern folks that the US actually did have values albeit at times a tad hypocritical(pre civil rights ways)
"It's the stuff that dreams are made of." -
TheWanderingFish — 13 years ago(September 01, 2012 12:55 PM)
Yes, those who reacted negatively to the film only did so because they can't handle the fact that Americans back then had values. Values like getting hysterical at the fact that their son doesn't share their ideological views.
Very astute.
I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here -
comicstu — 13 years ago(October 08, 2012 11:00 AM)
to whoever brought up Jonathan Rosenbaum earlier, yes, the film definitely has a significant critical defense for it, not just from Rosenbaum but also from critics like Dave Kehr who value Leo McCarey as a delicate director of human interaction. My Son John is a striking film to me because for all its shrillness about Communism, it's main agenda strikes me as purely emotional and deeply sympathetic. the arguments that McCarey levels against John have very little to do with his ideology (he even gives Walker some interesting lines about how Communism isn't such an ideologically far cry from Christianity), but with his intellectual arrogance, and with his allowing his ideology to cloud him to the love of his mother, however intellectually inferior she may be to him. it's a very moving portrait of a relationship that can ideally move anyone who has struggled with breaking off from his family's traditionalist values. it doesn't take a conservative ideologue to find this a touching film, and in fact i think it has particular resonance for leftists like myself who are currently reconciling our political and intellectual values to a respect and love for the conservative families that raised us.
the Leo McCarey whom Jean Renoir said understood human beings better than any other living director is certainly at work in the film, even if its third act is absolutely dreadful.
this certainly isn't run-of-the-mill Red Scare propaganda with no redeeming values. even if you can't get over its hysterical aspects, i think you'd have to be somewhat willfully ignorant to go that far. -
TonTon — 3 months ago(December 28, 2025 09:49 AM)
I agree with the original poster.
Heflin and Walker are brilliant, but the rest of the cast are ridiculous.
Then there are the portrayals.
Walker's character is smart, well educated and charismatic.
His family are ignorant and proud of it!
His father doesn't know the meaning of the word "thesis."
And yet they're the heroes of the story!
It's almost like this film was anti intellectual. -
huwdj — 3 months ago(December 28, 2025 10:44 AM)
From what I've read above, you'd think that with the USA in it's current state this film would be re-discovered and hailed as a lost masterpiece by a certain parties. But I've no interest in watching it to test that hypothesis (hypothesis: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation).
I have always depended on the kindness of Strangers - and the bastards let me down!