Just an awful movie
-
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.
-
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!