Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

bandw The story takes place in a small town at the turn of the 20th century and centers on the relationship between two friends, Drake (Ronald Reagan) and Parris (Robert Cummings), and their lives and loves from early childhood to young adulthood. There is enough turgid melodrama here to satisfy any soap opera fan.Given its cast, a score by Eric Krongold, and cinematography by James Wong Howe, I was hoping for more. I found Robert Cummings to be weak, always effecting the demeanor of an eager Boy Scout; he always seemed to be just reciting lines, without any real feeling. This was particularly true in one of his final scenes where he took it upon himself to recite the first two stanzas of "Invictus," coming across as a middle school student rushing through memorized lines. After saying that he couldn't remember all the words, he recited the first two stanzas word for word, but then did not even recite the most famous final lines:I the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.Parris' final words to Drake had a miraculous effect, in the literal meaning of "miraculous." Unbelievable, actually. At the other end of the acting spectrum I thought Claude Rains was very believable in the role of a psychologically tortured medical doctor. Between the bad and good of Cummings and Rains the other actors did well enough, except the child actors were a bit stilted. In the time since this movie was made the quality of child actors as advanced dramatically.Released in 1942 this is prototypical of movie-making of the time, which may make it worth watching for film history buffs. The acting styles are dated--millennials will have a hard time with this, being astonished by its lack of realism and its deus ex machina ending. A quote that will have modern audiences reeling was when Drake's wife told him, "Of course you'd have to tell me everything to do, I'm only a woman." I did not detect any tone of irony in her delivery of this line. I found the Korngold score repetitive and intrusive, common features of scores for 40s movies.Given the world situation at the time this was released (shortly after Pearl Harbor) I imagine audiences at the time felt it was oddly irrelevant. On the DVD is an extra that has the United States Marine Band playing several rousing tunes, starting with the Marines' Hymn--this segment was filmed in 1942 and I suspect that it might have been commonly shown along with "Kings Row."

Robert J. Maxwell This is a picture about a typical, happy, small American town of 1900. There is murder, madness, premarital coitus, suicide, double amputations, poverty, alcohol abuse, and first-degree snobbery.Cummings and his best friend Ronald Reagan are young men in King's Row. Cummings is a bit on the earnest side, while Reagan is blithe and carefree. Both, we can tell at once, are good men and true friends. They live on "Union Street", full of mansions, while the other side of town is "below the railroad tracks." Ideas about propriety and convention stifle attempts at social change.It has the qualities of an epic novel that veers from triumph to tragedy on a precise schedule, rather like the railroad trains. It's like, oh, "Peyton Place" or "The Young Philadelphians." Paths cross and cross-cross. Characters come and go, but mostly go.I'd compare it to something like "Gone With the Wind" too, except that there's no menace in the offing like a Civil War. I'd like to compare it to "The Brothers Karamazov" but it's not so finely observed. It just sort of rolls along of its own weight and covers so much territory that it's not uninteresting.The plot, briefly: Cummings loses his first love, goes to Vienna, and returns as a psychiatrist. Reagan loses his first love, then loses his legs, then finds another love, Ann Sheridan, but he can't get over the fact that he's now only half a man. Fortunately, after some hesitation, Cummings cures him in about thirty seconds.Cummings looks boyish and effete throughout but isn't embarrassing. None of the performances are embarrassing. Reagan has a meaty role and does well by it. Sheridan is the blunt and practical love of Reagan's post-operative existence and she's pretty good.On the whole, I find these sprawling melodramas to be fatuous but this one is no worse than many others and better than some. The direction is efficient and the photography is in lustrous black and white.The musical score is by Eric Wolfgang Korngold and it helps the movie immeasurably. Those first four portentous notes of the main theme, like the opening of Beethoven's fifth -- except different notes, of course. I speak to you as your expert on this subject because I once audited a course in piano. Not to be immodest, but, yes, musical genius runs in my family. People came from yards around to hear my grandfather play the baritone horn in a German marching band.At any rate, this is worth seeing. You get to see Ronald Reagan, future president of the United States, waking up, looking stunned, and shouting "WHERE'S THE REST OF ME!"

rpvanderlinden I believe that many of us, in our journeys through life, seek nothing more than to retrieve the lost innocence and safety of our childhood. It is a retreat from the cruelties and battles of adulthood. It's not necessarily the physical return to our childhood home - that's usually not possible, or even desirable - but a rediscovery of the home that exists somewhere in our hearts and our spirits. This is a prevailing theme in much of cinema. In "The Wizard of Oz" Dorothy realizes that everything she ever really wanted is back home in Kansas, and Scarlett makes the long journey back to her beloved Tara in "Gone with the Wind". Often home is associated with family. In "The Color Purple" all Celie wants is her sister, whom she hasn't seen since her childhood long, long ago. The final image in that film is the two grown sisters playing the hand-clapping game they once played as children.Then there is the magnificent "Kings Row" which says that, yes, we can go home again, and that things that turned bad can be put right. It is a powerful reverie of a movie and it had me in tears. The story is about several children in a small town who grow up to be adults. The lives they had are ruptured and they are beset by the trials and tribulations of adulthood and failing dreams. The movie is about that extra little bit of growing up they have to do in order to become the people they were meant to be. The challenges they face are brutal, and some of them don't survive. Those that do get to go home again. In the process of telling the story the movie celebrates honour, perseverance, courage, fairness, friendship, true love and the triumph of the human spirit. It shows us these virtues in action. It invites us to look, and it says: "This is what courage looks like." Or: "This is what love looks like in practice." We all need examples to show us the way. "Kings Row" is very much a parable, with dualistic symbols solidly in place - the two friends with opposite personalities; the two children's birthday parties, where one child is popular and the other isn't; the two real estate acreages; the two sides of the train tracks; the two households, early on, one where life is nurtured, the other where it is snuffed out. It's also the earliest movie that I, personally, have seen which depicts mental illness and psychiatry with any kind of detail and balance.This movie has one of the best opening chapters I've ever seen, introducing, with clarity and precision, all of the main characters as children and the nexus that will play out later in the story. Although the story covers a lot of time and dramatic territory I never felt that the movie was rushed or pared down. Every scene is remarkably efficient in the way it conveys information and dives right into the dramatic and emotional crux of the moment (the letter-writing segment is particularly brilliant), and every scene segues naturally into the next. The final two scenes, in one of which Parris recites part of William Henley's poem "Invictus", lift the movie into a kind of delirium. By the end I experienced, not exhaustion, but exhilaration by having gotten to know these people so well and having shared in their joys and sorrows. This is rare. In the end, the characters are so well defined that I wouldn't change a single performance by a single actor. All this AND the rich and detailed cinematography of James Wong Howe and the glorious, evocative music of Erich Korngold (the moment I heard the first chords I recognized him as the composer for "The Adventures of Robin Hood"). It's Warner Bros. all the way - bold and brassy. This is the kind of movie that provokes people to say, "They don't make 'em like this anymore." Old or contemporary, "Kings Row" stands alone. It is a wonderful movie.

classicsoncall With the passing of years and the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that Ronald Reagan and Bob Cummings might have been better off in each other's roles in "Kings Row". Reagan doesn't strike me as the playboy type, while the impression I have of Cummings is just that from watching all those 'Love That Bob' (The Bob Cummings Show) episodes back in the day.Still, the movie tells an effective story, attempting to handle a number of different subjects. For 1942, many of them seemed to be pushing the envelope of acceptable film topics, issues like psychiatric treatment for insanity and the willful amputation of a patients' legs as a duty to punish wickedness. The entire time I felt Dr. Tower (Claude Rains) was a demon for keeping his wife and daughter under some sort of desperate control, then became shocked to learn that he was shielding them from the harsh reality of a world that would be unable to accept them. Yet it takes the form of a murder/suicide to bring that revelation to the viewer, with an intrigue that leaves one baffled until the story is revealed.Even though it happens time and again, I'm always surprised to hear a character from an old film talking about how life isn't getting any simpler. That happens here in a conversation between Dr. Tower and his student Parris Mitchell (Cummings) as they discuss the new medical field of psychiatry. I imagine future movie watchers will get a kick out of the way we whine about our complicated life today. But seriously, I can't imagine things getting much more complex. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.In hindsight, the question that puzzles me is seeing Ann Sheridan's name at the top of the film's credits. It seems to me she joined the story about half way through, so being the top Warner's star at the time was probably the reason. Sheridan is actually my favorite actress of the Golden Era so I'm not being critical here. It just seems like it's Cummings' picture all the way and he's second billed, on loan from Universal, so again it's political. Most folks consider Reagan a less than gifted actor, so it's good to see him in a role that has some range in which he does a creditable job. Excellent support here as well from Claude Rains, Betty Field and Maria Ouspenskaya, even with their limited screen time.