The American Culture

(l-r) Helen Hayes, Dean Jagger, and Robert Walker in 'My Son John'

Leo McCarey’s My Son John (1952) has been uniformly lambasted by mainstream critics since the day it was released—because the villains are Communists. Yet Martin Scorsese, a smart cineaste and certainly no rabid anticommunist, classed the film among his all-time favorites and wrote very sympathetically and understandingly about it. It’s actually a highly interesting film, and well worth watching, very much in the style of McCarey’s other non-comedy films of the 1930s and ’40s, such as Love Affair and Going My Way. This clip (although of poor visual quality) gives a good sense of the film’s style and quality.—STK