All My Sons

Two thirds drama and one third film noir, Iriving Reis’ All My Sons, based on Arthur Miller’s successful play, stars Edward G. Robinson as Joe Keller, a father and husband who has been repressing his guilt from a past crime that destroyed the bond between two families. The emotional dam breaks, however, when Joe’s son Chris (Burt Lancaster) returns home from the war and announces he plans to marry his brother’s (presumed dead on the battlefield) erstwhile fiancee Ann Deever (Louisa Horton): it turns out Ann’s father (Frank Conroy), who was Joe’s business partner, is serving a prison sentence for the crime for which Joe was exonerated. Howard Duff plays Ann’s bitter brother George who has begun digging into the case, and the exceptional Mady Christians plays Joe’s wife Kate, a key enabler of Joe’s denial (“She means trouble for us,” she says, referring to Ann). Reis alternates scenes of domestic tranquility and budding romance (Chris and Ann’s first kiss on a moonlit hilltop is touchingly filmed) with increased tension, beginning with a particularly creepy scene when a drunken woman ambles slowly toward the family at a local restaurant and shouts “Murderer!” As the story becomes more tragic, the film somehow engenders both relief and hopelessness, the crucible of morality malfunctioning in traditional noir fashion.