Watch Four Sons For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Beautiful, moving film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

. . . ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, except that Melodramatic Hokum and Sappy Schmaltz have been substituted for FRONT's Gritty Authenticity and Cutting-Edge Realism. The only character who rings True in FOUR SONS is the Fascist German "Major Von Stromm," because "it takes one to know one," and SONS director John Ford often infamously Out-Hitlered Hitler. Just as Adolph had a guy behind-the-scenes engineering his "Final Solution," Hollywood's version of J. Edgar Hoover--John Ford--conspired in the Shadows with Anti-American Traitors whom could have been shot for High Treason, such as Marion Mitchell Morrison and Joe McCarthy, to foment a virtual military coup against the U.S. Constitution, Freedom, and Democracy, outlawing Decency and Intelligent Thought. Ford's decades-long Reign of Terror was so total that it thoroughly traumatized Tinseltown into awarding his Second-Rate Output Umpteen Oscars as they declared him The Movie Messiah. SONS version of World War One comes from Fox Studio, so its relationship to Actual War is the same as Fox "News" connection to Actual News: an exercise in Total Distortion.

It would be interesting to know the history behind this late silent release, which was apparently quite popular at the time but now feels like a somewhat butchered edit of what was originally planned as a "Big Parade"-like epic--I have no idea if that's what actually happened to it, but that's how it plays. (It's possible that the talkie craze had escalated such between its green- lighting and completion that the studio decided a long, elaborate silent would only reduce the number of screenings/box office per day, and ordered the film severely cut.) The cluttered story about a loving Bavarian small-town family and its fate during WW1 is staged with lavish care in virtually every shot, with beautiful lighting/camera-movement effects and frequent large numbers of extras and bit players involved. Yet the story itself hurtles along with so little time for detail and characterization that the emotional impact is blunted. Of the titular four sons, only the one who goes to America is given significant screen time, which greatly lessens the intended impact when siblings become combat casualties. So the primary focus falls on their widowed ma, a Mother Macree type (curiously, Ford made another film of that precise name the same year) whose selfless suffering over the years is portrayed gracefully, yet is a rather one-note and predictable characterization to base the entire film around. And the villainous German officers who send her boys off to their deaths are even more caricatured "Dirty Hun" types, complete with omnipresent sneers and monocles. Scene by scene, "Four Sons" is directed in such a virtuoso fashion, and the production so ambitious in story arc and physical scale, that it feels like a leisurely, sentimental but masterly 2 1/2 hour epic that unfortunately somehow got reduced to a 90-minute highlight reel with little nuance or breathing room. That Ford could do better is clear from such films of the same era as "The Iron Horse" and "3 Bad Men." "Four Sons" is still well worth seeing, for its visual qualities in particular as well as numerous effective individual sequences. But it plays like the truncated shell of something that was originally planned as a much more expansive project.

Other than The Iron Horse we rarely see John Ford's silent films. But in viewing Four Sons we can certainly spot a lot of stylistic traces and themes that mark Ford's more well known sound films.Before The Iron Horse Ford was a director of Grade B westerns mostly starring Harry Carey. After The Iron Horse Ford started doing other kinds of films. A story with a German setting one might think would be unusual for Ford, but you examine it closely this film is as sentimental as any of his Irish films. And Margaret Mann who played the mother of the Four Sons was a harbinger of such later mother characters in Ford films as Olive Carey, Irene Rich, and the grandmama of them all, Jane Darwell.Watch also how Ford handles the military sequences in both the German and American settings. The cultural differences are there, but the military way is universal. John Wayne is listed in a bit role as an Officer and I think I spotted him during a scene at a railway station where a particularly nasty Teutonic major played by Earle Foxe. Wayne I believe is one of his aides.The story is a simple one Margaret Mann is a widow with four grown sons in a village in Bavaria. The sons are James Hall, Charles Morton, Ralph Bushman, and George Meeker. Hall has been in communication with a friend in America urging him to emigrate from Germany and he does. Hall does achieve the American dream, opening a successful business, marrying June Collyer and giving Mann her first grandchild. Then World War I comes and that's the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.Four Sons holds up well even after 80+ years. Mann's trials and tribulations as a mother certainly is a universal theme. And the ending is as happy and sentimental one as John Ford ever devised in any of his films.

In late 1920s Hollywood there was a brief craze for German cinema, especially at Fox, who had recently appropriated FW Murnau. It was no surprise then that, as well as bringing over the genuine article, the studios would also begin cranking out a few pictures that were Germanic in setting if not in style. Four Sons also takes advantage of the trend for World War pictures after the success The Big Parade.As well as directing Four Sons, John Ford was also the producer, which is bit of a mixed blessing. With the director allowed greater executive control you get all the best and worst of the free-range Ford. As has often been remarked, Ford had "economy of expression" – that is, the ability to convey information and story in as few shots as possible. The flipside of this however is that he did tend to get bogged down with comedy scenes, or in this case restating and reinforcing the sense of rural simplicity and family unity until it becomes more monotonous than moving. The comic moments are particularly weak in this picture – just fat men with moustaches and Prussians with monocles being stereotypically Teutonic.But one great advantage of having Ford as producer is that the picture is relatively free from unnecessary intertitles. All the great silent directors were of course skilled visual storytellers and Ford is no exception, and of course different screenwriters vary in their wordiness, but the frequency and necessity of intertitles would ultimately be down to whoever was in overall charge of the production. Ford has here cut down the title cards to a minimum, and so we get some great little moments such as the postman turning the first letter over in Mother Bernle's hands to let us know that she cannot read, or the villagers approaching the postman to find out if is their family who is to receive the black envelope – moments which would have been ruined by a load of intertitles in many other productions of this era.And the visual style of Ford's pictures was by now more or less fully developed. It's interesting to see here how in Ford's world there is no midpoint between town and country. We don't see, for example, the village framed by surrounding hills or fields, or even against the sky. The village itself is the frame and the background, as if to make it an enclosed and totally civilized space. In contrast, whenever Ford shot a scene out in the wilderness he emphasised its openness – although Four Sons never really gets out in the open air so you don't see that here.While Four Sons may be somewhat awash with sentimentality, Ford's simplistic approach of showing the tenderest moments with delicate shot composition does at least allow the picture some dignity. For example, he uses the overhead light to throw an almost heavenly glow over the family meal scene, then later echoes this with the shot of Mother Bernle grieving in a shaft of daylight. The most effective shot of all though is when Joseph says goodbye to his wife before going off to war. Ford goes against convention by filming the couple from behind in long shot, and the beauty of this moment almost makes me forgive all the other flaws of the picture. It's also a good decision not to show their faces, because James Hall was not a particularly good actor, as we can see in the scene where he returns home again.In spite these touches of brilliance, the picture as a whole is weakened because it continually bombards us with either sentiment or tragedy. Of course, cinema would be dull indeed without poignancy, but poignancy only works in small doses. Saturate a picture in emotions and the individual tugs lose impact. Four Sons is a good work for Ford the director, but this fact doesn't quite save it from the poor judgment of Ford the producer.