All My Sons (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

All My Sons (1948) – I. Reis

Although sometimes categorised as film noir due to its dark themes and critique of the American Dream, Irving Reis’s film of Arthur Miller’s Tony award winning play (written just before Death of a Salesman) is better classified as an excruciating moral drama. Edward G. Robinson plays Joe Keller who runs a factory that makes aircraft parts. His son Chris, played by Burt Lancaster, is set to inherit the factory and hopes to marry the daughter of Joe’s former partner, Herb Deever (Frank Conroy), now in jail, convicted of knowingly selling faulty parts to the air force that led 21 pilots to die.  Joe was exonerated of the same crime, as he claimed not to know what Herb had done. The return of Herb’s daughter Ann (Louisa Horton) to the town opens old wounds and casts doubt on Joe’s innocence. Joe’s wife Kate (Mady Christians) defensively protects him from accusations by Ann’s brother George (Howard Duff) and seeks to break up Chris and Ann (believing Ann still pledged to her older son who never returned from the war). Although the family tensions are well-acted, the film best serves as an indictment of capitalism and the moral blindness that is created by the desperate need to make a profit to support a family or a lifestyle, leading to choices that privilege self/family over employee/consumer. It’s a timeless theme and echoed in the headlines year after year – only corporations don’t seem to ultimately accept their guilt as Joe Keller does.