A family saga in which three of a Bavarian widow's sons go to war for Germany and the fourth goes to America, Germany's eventual opponent. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with L'Imaginne Ritrovato and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 1999.
Direction
Ford's early mastery of intimate family drama against epic scope.
Cinematography
Stunning Bavarian landscapes and expressive close-ups.
Acting
Margaret Mann's wordless maternal devastation.
Director
John Ford
Margaret Mann
Mother Bernle
James Hall
Joseph - Her son
Charles Morton
Johann - Her Son
Francis X. Bushman Jr.
Franz - Her Son
George Meeker
Andreas - Her Son
June Collyer
Annabelle
Earle Foxe
Major von Stomm
Albert Gran
The Postman
Frank Reicher
The Schoolmaster
Ferdinand Schumann-Heink
A Staff Sergeant
Jack Pennick
The Iceman
John Wayne
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Fox destroyed the original negative in 1936; this surviving print was found in Czechoslovakia and restored by the Academy in 1999.
Released as talkies exploded, this silent flopped commercially — yet Ford would recycle its mother-son war trauma in How Green Was My Valley.
US
