IMDb > All My Sons (1948)

All My Sons (1948) More at IMDbPro »

Overview

User Rating:
7.4/10   532 votes
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Down 7% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Irving Reis
Writers:
Chester Erskine (writer)
Arthur Miller (play)
Contact:
View company contact information for All My Sons on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
May 1948 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama more
Plot:
All My Sons tells the story of Joe Keller, a successful, middle-aged, self-made man who has done a terrible and tragic thing: during World War II... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
2 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(28 articles)
Katherine Heigl Celebrates Daughter's 1st B-Day
 (From Extra. 23 November 2009, 11:20 AM, PST)
Patrick Wilson, Carrie Preston & More Join Starry Artios Awards Ceremony Tonight, 11/2; Janeane Garofalo Hosts
 (From BroadwayWorld.com. 2 November 2009, 12:17 PM, PST)
User Comments:
Of Suburbs, Studios, and Arthur Miller more (20 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Edward G. Robinson ... Joe Keller

Burt Lancaster ... Chris Keller
Mady Christians ... Kate Keller
Louisa Horton ... Ann Deever
Howard Duff ... George Deever
Frank Conroy ... Herbert Deever
Lloyd Gough ... Jim Bayliss

Arlene Francis ... Sue Bayliss
Harry Morgan ... Frank Lubey (as Henry Morgan)
Elisabeth Fraser ... Lydia Lubey
more
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
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Runtime:
95 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Recording)
Certification:
Norway:A (1948) | Finland:K-16
Filming Locations:
Santa Rosa, California, USA
Company:
Universal International Pictures (UI) more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
The original Broadway production of "All My Sons" opened at the Coronet Theater in New York on January 29, 1947, ran for 328 performances and won the 1947 Tony Award (New York City) for the Best Play for the author Arthur Miller. His original script was used as the basis for the screen play for the movie version. more
Goofs:
Continuity: When Joe comes out of the house upon Annie's arrival, he comes down the front steps and walks into the yard with his arms raised. In the next instant, he's back at the steps and his arms are down. more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Facing the Past (2005) (V) more
Soundtrack:
Alice B. more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
11 out of 23 people found the following comment useful.
Of Suburbs, Studios, and Arthur Miller, 5 May 2001
Author: telegonus from brighton, ma

The movie version of Arthur Miller's All My Sons is yet another excellent example of how a fairly dreadful play can make a watchable, even beautiful film. In its day quite relevant, the play now reeks of the stuffily leftish Old Testament pieties of the Group Theatre of the thirties, and in style, if not content, anticipates the think-piece, more mainstream television dramas of the fifties. The plot is worth going into only briefly, and concerns a morally corrupt though not innately bad manufacturer of aircraft parts whose cost-cutting was responsible for the crashing of several planes during the then recent Second World War. Set in what appears to be either a New York suburb or a leafy section of one of the city's outer boroughs, the films is beautifully photographed and designed. It isn't quite realistic, as it is obviously a studio product, but it is far less artificial-looking than most movies of the period, and is singularly evocative in every detail of a way of middle class life, leisurely and informal, egalitarian and yet conscious of social distinctions, that has long passed into history. Beautifully rendered also is the large, very comfortable house in and around which much of the film takes place. Not quite a mansion, it is nevertheless roomy and in its way elegant, of Victorian vintage or nearly so. We get to see so much of it. The dining room, with its fluffy, lacey things all about; the heavy soup bowls and plates decorated with vines and flowers; and in its somwhat retro feeling it appears, like the family itself, both vaguely European and wholesomely American. Everything in the house seems heavy and solid, nailed down, as it were, as if this way of life was going to go on forever. The scenes in the backyard show the lazy, hazy summer afternoons of lemonade and hammocks, before the arrival of television, interstate highways, and shopping malls. Overall the picture is so brilliantly and minutely detailed, whether the set is a restaurant or a factory, that it is astonishing that it didn't win the Academy Award for set design. The action, consisting mostly of people either arguing with one another, lying, or expressing strong emotions, like love and hate, is very well presented and framed within the various settings. None of the actors in the film, including a young Burt Lancaster, is at his absolute best, though Edward G. Robinson, as the paterfamilas, in snugly in his element here, and quite credible, if not moving. There's a cockiness to Robinson which, though quite charming in certain roles, works against pathos or sympathy of any kind. Thus, in the end, the film is strangely fails to tug at the heartstrings, so to speak; it worked better in the earlier scenes, before the story built a head of steam. A few behind the scenes things are worth mentioning, not the least of which director Irving Reis, whose orchestration of this and several other films of the period showed great potential. Like Robert Wise, Mark Robson, John Sturges, Edward Dmytryk and Jules Dassin, Reis was a strong up-and-comer in the Hollywood pecking order of directors of the time, and was, sadly, to die just a few years later. Mady Christians, who plays Robinson's foreign-born wife, was blacklisted shortly after the film came about. All My Sons was one of the films that was presumably going to launch its studio, the newly reorganized Universal-International, into the big leagues. It didn't, but that's another story.

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