How sad is this?

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

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 the typical German provincial town of Burgendorf lives a charming old woman, Dame Bernle, and her handsome and beloved four sons; they live a tranquil life among their classic Teutonic neighbours until one day war starts and Dame Bernle's beloved sons must join the army.This German count must confess that the films of Herr John Ford, the director of "Four Sons", have never been much to the liking of this aristocrat. His characters are stereotypes and he repeats the same themes again and again throughout his career. For these reasons it is not strange that this German count is not usually in the mood for Ford.This time "Four Sons" also includes stereotyped characters, Germans this time, not Irish… ( fortunately there is one true-life character in the whole film, a wicked, evil Maj. von Stomm with monocle included ) . People walk around in the bucolic provincial German town where everyone dresses like Germans, drink like Teutons and you have small girls with pigtails, martial geese splash in a pond nearby and everyone is happy. Absolute nonsense, natürlich! Germans are serious not merry people!.Such German incongruities are at least visually perfect thanks to superb sets and great cinematography, all elegantly filmed by Herr Ford whose use of the camera is especially astonishing during the war trenches scene.But the most interesting aspect, indeed the great revelation made while revisiting "Four Sons" for this German count was that this aristocrat noticed a strange and perverse undercurrent in the story. Each time that charming Mutterchen Bernle gives thanks to God, something terrible happens almost immediately afterwards. The first time that she does so, war starts; the second time she intones the mysterious incantation, three of her beloved sons die in the war. The third time that Mutterchen Bernle give thanks to God she is in New York, in order to be together with her only surviving son, and -remembering that "Four Sons" was produced during the silent year of 1928- well… logically Mutterchen Bernle was the cause of the Wall Street crash of 1929!!.And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must avoid old German ladies who bring bad luck.Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

Sentimental, but not mawkish, the early John Ford silent, "Four Sons," is a well made film that exemplifies early 20th century values. The four sons of a Bavarian widow are swept up in the events of World War I. Three of the boys fight for the Kaiser, while the fourth, who had emigrated to the United States, is on the opposite side. The screenplay does not dwell on politics, although the German officers have villainous characters, and the American son chastises an employee for advocating war, because "America is neutral." Most of the action takes place in a small village in Bavaria, and the unspoken message is that ordinary Germans are as kind and feeling as people everywhere.Despite a predictable storyline, the performances avoid the "grand style" that gave silent acting a bad name. Made in 1928 at the apogee of the American silent era, John Ford's direction is solid, and the film foreshadows his adaptation of "How Green Was My Valley" more than a decade later. Certainly the two strong mothers who suffer the absence of their sons have much in common. If John Ford had not directed "Four Sons," the film could have been largely forgotten. Plot holes abound, and coincidences occur that "only happen in the movies." However, the film is a good example of popular entertainment in the late silent era, and modern audiences will likely be engaged, especially students of Ford and those with an affection for silent movies.

This classic John Ford masterpiece has been spoiled by bureaucratic incompentece.Somebody in 20th Century-Fox has decided to remove the original Movietone soundtrack and replace it with an inappropriate score. it seems that for certain people, the original intentions of director John Ford were no good enough for today. Hence, the film was stripped of its sound... which means that we do not have the film as it was originally intended to be seen.Even though in most parts of the world, as well here in the United States, most people saw the film in a silent version, the original soundtrack is a crucial element of the film and without it, the experience is incomplete.A great film, but avoid the DVD until an authentic restored version with the original soundtrack becomes available.