It will remind you of one of those old travelogues in lurid color and the narrator's honeyed voice telling us that, "Now we enter the beautiful and ancient port of San Placebo with its towering palm trees, where the natives in their curious dress are waiting to greet us with frangipanis in their hair and palms outstretched for a phallux or two from the visiting tourists."
Barrel-chested, ham-handed Brian Donleavy as the least likely Czech immigrant you're ever likely to see, enters America through Ellis Island and walks across the country to the Mesabi range in Minnesota where he begins honest toil as an underground miner. Not content with simply working, he learns English from the school teacher and marries her. They have four or five children in the course of the movie. Donleavy is an industrious and ambitious guy and they move to Pittsburgh. He knows the steel business inside and out, rises to the top, and grinds out Flying Fortresses for the Air Force in World War II.
It's strictly routine. It's the equivalent of a flag waver for the Armed Forces during the war, only this is aimed at the home front. We should all be like Brian Donleavy, a humble, unlettered, God-fearing son of the soil whose intelligence and drive are going to win the war for us.
There's no edge to it. There's not a surprise in it. When their oldest boy is of age, it's 1918 and he enlists in the U. S. Army. We can only wait for the telegram, which we know will be read out loud.
The humor misfires because it's so determinedly corny. Maybe somebody else finds it funny when a man insists on tinkering with a balky automobile and a small explosion envelopes him in smoke. But there is some interest in getting to see the Mesabi iron ore pit -- "the biggest man-made Grand Canyon in the United States." It was made by entrepreneurs; the Grand Canyon by God. And there are one or two exciting incidents. In the best, Donleavy winds up hanging by his thumbs above a carpet of bubbling molten steel.
I'd never heard of this movie before and now, having seen it, I think I know why.
Barrel-chested, ham-handed Brian Donleavy as the least likely Czech immigrant you're ever likely to see, enters America through Ellis Island and walks across the country to the Mesabi range in Minnesota where he begins honest toil as an underground miner. Not content with simply working, he learns English from the school teacher and marries her. They have four or five children in the course of the movie. Donleavy is an industrious and ambitious guy and they move to Pittsburgh. He knows the steel business inside and out, rises to the top, and grinds out Flying Fortresses for the Air Force in World War II.
It's strictly routine. It's the equivalent of a flag waver for the Armed Forces during the war, only this is aimed at the home front. We should all be like Brian Donleavy, a humble, unlettered, God-fearing son of the soil whose intelligence and drive are going to win the war for us.
There's no edge to it. There's not a surprise in it. When their oldest boy is of age, it's 1918 and he enlists in the U. S. Army. We can only wait for the telegram, which we know will be read out loud.
The humor misfires because it's so determinedly corny. Maybe somebody else finds it funny when a man insists on tinkering with a balky automobile and a small explosion envelopes him in smoke. But there is some interest in getting to see the Mesabi iron ore pit -- "the biggest man-made Grand Canyon in the United States." It was made by entrepreneurs; the Grand Canyon by God. And there are one or two exciting incidents. In the best, Donleavy winds up hanging by his thumbs above a carpet of bubbling molten steel.
I'd never heard of this movie before and now, having seen it, I think I know why.