Reviews

Though I was nine when this movie appeared, and well remember all of the talk about it at the time, amazingly I had never seen the movie until 50 years after its release. This is an outstanding movie. My wife and I started watching on AMC at 3:00 A.M. and could not go to bed until 6:30 when it was over, we were so gripped by the story.

Contrary to some reviewers who believe the editing should have been tighter and the movie shortened because some parts of the movie could be left out without affecting the main plot; I believe that this movie demonstrates very effectively the random capriciousness of life. It demonstrates as well that our actions have consequences, but also that things happen which intrude upon our lives entirely by chance.

The writing and acting are excellent for the most part. Watching the movie, one feels that these are events that really happened just as they were portrayed. These are emotions that were really felt just as they were portrayed. Contrary to what one may think from the way in which the movie and book title became a catch phrase for the supposedly stultifying conformity of the 50's, there is no ideological feel to the movie at all, just a human story, a story of the things which happen in a man's life, how he tries to deal with them honestly, yet practically, and the effects of his actions upon all those he loves.

The movie has the feeling of being powerfully real. It is life as we remember it from those days. Not surprisingly it is the thinly disguised autobiography of Sloan Wilson, the novel's author. Excellent drama, equal to the great, but more highly praised Best Years of Our Lives.

This is probably the best TV movie of all time. Odysseus is the perfect hero for the aging 1st world population, with his use of guile to triumph when strength is not enough. Despite the fact that one of my favorite parts of The Odyssey is left out, when Odysseus returns home after 20 years, his faithful pet Argus awaiting him, only to die after one greeting; I think this is an incredibly arresting film. Armand Assante is surprising terrific as Odysseus. He conveys with his expressions the depth of thought and emotion which characterized Odysseus. All the more amazing when one considers that Odysseus was an Achaean, a tall, fair race of people, though Odysseus was, himself, described by Homer as one of middle stature, for an Achaean, no doubt. This movie makes the tales of Homer seem more real than any film I have ever seen. The emotions of all are complex and real. The mutual love and devotion of Odysseus and Penelope are portrayed in a beautiful and believable way by the actors. The scene in which Odysseus returns to take back his kingdom is brutally and believably real. I cannot say enough good things about this movie. It should be required in the schools.

I started watching this movie flipping through channels on TV and thought, at first, that it was a documentary. The acting and cinematography had that kind of verisimilitude. Robert Duvall has created a masterpiece with this film, which so accurately portrays the conflicted nature of even the most devout. Even they sin. Duvall shows this as (at least in some cases) not hypocrisy but the fallen and imperfect nature of man. This is a powerful and thoughtful movie, unbelievably well acted.

This movie portrays the simple faith of the uneducated, in the world in which I was reared, a faith to which, as adults, we often wish we could return. The effect of this movie is that one feels at the end, that one has watched something real, something which portrays real human feeling.

This is an unbelievable movie. It definitely should have won an Oscar. It is moving on every level. It begins with a quote from George Eliot as to the meaning of home. The soundtrack is beautiful. It is spiritually based. It is the way life used to be, I swear. People in my youth and in the past used to talk this way, before the triumph of godless materialism and carnality.

People today tend to have knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep. The old people may have known things only as wide as their yards, but they knew deeply.

I'll warn you the movie is 3 to 4 hours long, but WOW! A person cannot help but be better for having watched this movie.

IMO, every performance in this shocker is realistic. A wrong belief about this movie is that the ending had to be changed to meet the movie code. Actually, Anderson had his own rule that good should always prevail, which he had to violate in the stage play to keep it consistent with March's novel. Anderson actually preferred the movie ending. This movie dealt with what was a very politically incorrect idea in the last half of the century, that behavior is largely genetically determined, and comes to the generally current opinion as opposed to the easy idea prevalent at the time. I grew up in the 50's, and this movie nails life in the 50's. All of the characters are from my youth, in a time when tragedy was more common.