A Clarence Brown special from 1938, meaning it's well-crafted, placid, and determinedly mainstream, this family drama is most interesting in its detailed portrait of small-town pre-Civil War life. We're in rural Ohio circa 1850, where the new preacher (Walter Huston, excellent as always) has arrived with his rebellious son (Gene Reynolds, later James Stewart) and loving wife (Beulah Bondi). They're living off the charity of the impoverished community, and the father-son conflicts never end. We proceed through the son's struggle to become a doctor, and his distinguished service in the Union army, and his neglect of his mom. It's over-sentimental and unsurprising, but it does have some beautiful set pieces (the acquiring of the family horse, the conversations between the son and the local drunken doctor, the battle montage), and the supporting cast is pretty amazing: Charles Coburn, John Carradine, Guy Kibbee, Ann Rutherford, Leatrice Joy Gilbert (she's charming), Sterling Holloway, Charley Grapewin, a feisty Leona Roberts. Plot threads are left hanging (the Stewart-Rutherford romance doesn't develop at all), and Herbert Stothart's score is a bit intrusive, telling you how to feel when it doesn't have to. But it's good MGM product of the day, and yes, by the end you'll have the sniffles.
Review of Of Human Hearts
