Pilgrimage

Viewed September 28, 2021. Might be the best of Ford’s early films, an elegiac drama about a mother grieving the loss of her son during WWI that mixes the Expressionist imagery of his early period with the finely tuned naturalism, the attention to small and insignificant moments and the great depth of feeling they accrue. It's like The Grapes of Wrath in its seamless balance of humor and tragedy, and its terrific eye for pastoral beauty and what it represents for the characters.

A hokey Saturday Evening Post story -- from which Ford is able to extract his usual preoccupations, although on distaff side for a change -- with some great photography.

The premise itself is a bit hard to buy in to but a subtle, tender touch could have handled it in an interesting way. Instead Ford swamps the film in sentimentality and seriously overdoes many of the characterisations making the premise entirely too hard to buy in to. To make it worse he tries to counteract this by loading up the middle sections with irritating silliness which just feels at odds with the dramatic core of the film.

Ford lays on the syrup a little too thickly in this old melodrama about a mother who comes between her son and his lover with tragic consequences. The best scenes play like a silent film inspired by Murnau; the shots of corn fields under night skies are blatantly romantic and beautiful, and Ford creates an atmosphere that is completely transportive. Once Crosman leaves home, the spell is broken, and what remains is an agreeable, if unremarkable, journey from grief to forgiveness.

An effective drama, though overwrought in a few places, Pilgrimage works best in its quieter moments--an early scene on the farm between mother and son, a medal ceremony for mothers on the New York dock, and a remembrance at a memorial in Paris.

A sentimental grandma comedy! Didn't see that one coming. We follow the mother on a pilgrimage over the France to see her sons grave. This felt like a strange kind of movie. It didn't all click together. A bit stagy, overly emotional and the story goes all over the place without attempting to tie all the loose ends together. But even with that it's got moments of beautiful sadness and quirky sense of humor, so expect a few laughs and maybe a tear watching old Henrietta Crosman in all her glory!