All My Sons

... in that in most noirs you see the dilemma up front in its compexity and completion. And then you watch the protagonist stumble through a series of decisions in which the noose just tightens.

Here the opening scenes are middle class and almost mundane and so post war. A son (Burt Lancaster) has returned from war and is planning to marry the girl of his dead brother, killed in the war. The living son's mother can't deal with the fact that her dead son is indeed dead - he died on an aerial mission and his body was never recovered. And thus she is not very supportive of this prospective union.

But this film turns out not to be about war and remembrance and the new middle class at all. Instead it is about a deed past done, and apparently the perpetrator has gotten away with it, and only as the film wears on are all of the secrets revealed, as well as the real reason the mother cannot accept her son's death.

Edward G. Robinson is terrific as the father who is living the American dream after being set out on the sidewalks by his own family since the age of ten. Lancaster with his beaming smile and his head full of bushy hair would look at home in a collegiate letter jacket, and this is a good early showcase for his talents. Harry Morgan appears in a minor role as one of the fathers of the ongoing baby boom.

I haven't said much here about what is really the conflict in this film, because I don't want to give anything away. However, it is a great film about moral conflict versus friend and family and even patriotic obligations, and it is a shame it is so obscure.