MY SON, MY SON!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 57, 26 July 1940, Page 21

MY SON, MY SON!

(United Artists) This film strives so hard to be Important and Artistic (in capital letters) that it is almost certain to convince a lot of people that it is just that. It seems a pity to try to disillusion them; and, indeed, those who are prepared to accept the unusual gullibility and near-mushi-ness of Brian Aherne’s character of a fond father, and the concentrated and scarcely credible evil of Louis Hayward as his wayward son, will probably feel that they are getting pretty good value

for their money. They certainly get a competent cast and some expensive sets. However, without wishing to appear too erudite, we would like to point out to Mr. Howard Spring, from whose novel, "O, Absolom," the picture is taken, that his plot has white whiskers and long underwear. Those who have heard of Hippolytus, Theseus, and Phedra, will find that this is a modern rewrite of an old situation. So are most other films, but "My Son, My Son!" doesn’t get away with it as well as many. It’s all a trifle too portentous and resolutely earnest. It is the story of jealousy between the father and son over the father’s second and very lovely flame (Madeleine Carroll). That, actually, is not all-for there are quite a lot of good things as well as bad. sandwiched into the showbut it is, of the many climaxes, the most forceful. Father, having had a hard trek along life’s thorny ways, decides that his son shall know no inhibitions or difficulties. So sonnyboy romps along the highway of gilded youth, progressing with joie de vivre through successive stages of decadence as schoolboy cheat and liar, adolescent gambler and rip, and lusty, predatory male. Dear old Dad (not so old, really) is benevolently

blind to his offspring’s manifest failings until sonnyboy so far forgets himself as to try to seduce his future step-mother. Foiled in this, he does a proper going-to-the-dogs act which entails the seduction of his childhood chum, now a successful actress, In the book, the author had the grace to make sonnyboy hang himself. This, obviously, was rather too summary treatment for a Hollywood character; but Hollywood just as obviously couldn’t allow sonnyboy to live on with his_sins unexpiated; so he is packed off to the first Great War, where he blasts hell out of the Germans and thereby gains himself a post-humous V.C. Dad, injured in spirit but with his paternal faith thus triumphantly vindicated, does an Ella Wheeler Wilcox act with Madeleine Carroll in the light of the sunset, which emotion-charged scene fades, in the natural order of things, into those two memorable and wholly delightful words, > THE END.