Letter from a Soldier, A (1951)
*** (out of 4)
A Korean war soldier (Keefe Brasselle) goes to visit his dead friend's mother (Marjorie Main) so that he can read her his final letter. At first the mother rejects the soldier until he starts to read the letter where her son speaks highly of him. This is a rather interesting short from MGM because it's taken from their film It's a Big Country, which would be later in the year. One has to wonder why they'd release this before the feature and not even mention that a feature was coming but either way this is a pretty good film. I haven't seen the full length version, which features various segments from directors like Sturges, Thorpe and Wellman, but this one from Weist makes me want to seek out the full film. The performances by Brasselle and Main are very good and the emotion behind the words in the letter are very touching. This is certainly a message picture but that doesn't really matter since the message works so well.
