THE SULLIVANS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 22

THE SULLIVANS

(20th Century-Fox)

‘T HIS story is based on fact: that is to say, there actually were five Sullivan brothers, the sons of an Irish-American train conductor, who all joined the

Navy on the same day, were allowed at their special request to serve on the same ship, and. who went down together in action off the Solomons. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, and that it will not be thought I am in the least decrying their particular sacrifice, if I suggest that it was the fact that there were five of them which weighed most with 20th Century-Fox when deciding to make this film. In other words, it was mostly the mass-production quality of the Sullivans’ story that caused the studio to hail them, on behalf of the American public, as "the greatest family of heroes that any Allied country has yet produced": the same quality that made Ford the world’s greatest industrialist and Mrs. Dionne its most celebrated mother. But whatever you may think about cars and babies, I doubt if heroism can be reckoned in numbers. This is not to deny the considerable appeal which The Sullivans has to a. large body of picturegoers, even outside America. The heroism is, in fact, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) confined to the last ten. minutes or so, The other hour and three-quarters are taken up with a very homely, very matey, and highly sentimental record of small-town family life, as we watch the Sullivan boys growing up from childhood, playing together, squabbling together, getting into mischief together, going to church together, and eating an enormous amount of food together. The greater part of the film, indeed, seems to be spent at the breakfast- and tea-table-a circumstance which might have proved more boring than it is if these repasts were not presided over by that fine actor, Thomas Mitchell (as Father Sullivan), and by Selena Royle, who is the warm-hearted mother type. I found the display of father-love and mother-love a good deal more acceptable and convincing than the large doses of brother-love supplied by the boys. They were rather too matey; too much addicted to back-slappifig and shoulderpawing for my taste. But this again I expect to be a minority opinion.