calvinnme By 1944, the Allies were winning the war, it was just a matter of time. Yet morale boosting entertainment was still popular. This film really fills the bill as giving you a look at small time American life pre-war, spotlighting the Sullivans as the kind of family every family would want to be, and showing the great sacrifice they made in the loss of all five of the sons of Thomas and Alleta Sullivan - George, Joe, Frank, Matt, and Al, ranging in ages from 20 to 28 years of age at the time of their deaths while serving on the same ship at their own request.The film does a great job of showing their togetherness, starting the story from their time as children and how they always stuck together, all for one, one for all. Dad (Thomas Mitchell) still speaks with a brogue, and worked as a train conductor, never missing a day, not even the day he finds out about the fate of his sons. The scene at the end of the film, on the train passing the water tower where his sons, as children, used to climb up and wave to him is a tribute to the loss he has suffered finally sinking in. Mom is stoic and hardworking, even offering a cup of coffee to the navy officer who has come to bring the bad news. Only the youngest son married and left behind one child, a son.It really is a window into another time - one when high school grads could make a living at factories that no longer exist. Even dad's profession is a rare one these days with these small towns being hollowed out hulls of places. I guess it's the historian in me that finds it hard to ignore these details. This is really a biopic more than a war film as the vast majority of it is focused on who the brothers were as people, before there ever was a Pearl Harbor. Highly recommended even if not entirely factual.

richard-1787 This was certainly made as a B movie. It's clearly not a big-budget film, and with the exceptions of a very young Anne Baxter and Thomas Mitchell, who always played supporting rolls (often extremely well, but supporting roles nonetheless), there are no stars in it.The director, Lloyd Bacon, had made a lot of good movies before this, though, and that is probably the thing to focus on when trying to explain why this turned out so good.And it turned out very good.What makes this movie so powerful is what is does not do, in a sense. Most of the movie focuses on the childhood and young adulthood of the five Sullivan boys. They are not portrayed as cute kids, or angels, or anything out of the ordinary. They are feisty, but they are not "loveable." They are, in short, regular kids/young guys. They could be any American kids/young guys. They are, indeed, everymen, and we relate to them because of that.Part of why this is so is that the studio realized they should not be played by recognizable stars. They are played by unfamiliar faces who don't look like movie stars. They therefore look as if they could be your neighbors, or in fact your son or brother or .... So, when the five of them die on that ship in the war - as of course everyone who saw this movie knew that they would - it really hits hard, because they could be someone you know.And then you have to watch Ward Bond tell their family.The sister and the young wife behave as Hollywood portrayed young women: subject to their emotions. But they are quickly out of the picture.What hits us, right in the gut, are the reactions of their father, Thomas Mitchell, and their mother, Selena Royle, who holds us riveted by her refusal to break down, to dishonor her sons by being anything less than brave herself. It's a devastating scene, and the highlight of the movie."Less is more in movie-making," it has been said. No movie demonstrates that better than this one. There is no gushy sentiment, no over-dramatization. Everyone knows from the beginning that the five young men will die. There is no suspense. This movie exists to make these five young men real to us, so that we realize what a terrible loss any man's life in war is. And this movie does that superbly.Treat yourself. Watch it. You'll need Kleenex at the end, no matter how macho you are, and that's not fun. But this movie isn't designed to be fun. This movie is designed to make you feel the real horror of war. It kills men - and women - who are nice people and do not deserve to die.---------------After yet another viewing, especially of the last scenes, I found myself wishing I could have stopped the movie with the father's salute to the memory of his sons on the water tower. What follows, the christening of the ship named after them, made sense in the movie's World War II context. After all, if the ending had been too sad, Americans might have stopped supporting the war. But, now that it is over, I think it would be more powerful if we were left with the father's efforts to hold back his tears while he salutes the memory of his foolhardy and very brave sons.

mikeswinehart I saw this movie when I was about 10 (1957) and still remember it today. I used to tell people about their story regularly and how the Sole Survivor Act came about. But after a while, well, you know, it just becomes redundant when people just don't seem to realize its importance. I have always remembered this story, but can't remember what I saw on TV last night. I didn't remember they were from Iowa, (where I am from). I was happy to see they weren't just forgotten after the War was over. The ships named after them, the museum, the Sole Survivor Act and the war posters are well deserved for such sacrifice. Now if I can just find the movie again....

moonspinner55 So jaded our we as a nation that the scenario of this patriotic family drama today looks like it was created by aliens--foreigners who got the impression that WWII-era America may have resembled just this, conjured up through memories of spreads in the Saturday Evening Post. Close-knit, church-going kin with five sons and one daughter josh and rib and 'lick' each other throughout the 1930s, the children growing into fine, upstanding young adults by the dawn of the next decade. True story decked out with Hollywood trimmings, though most of the actors are so sincere that the sentiment doesn't feel heavy-handed. Still, these brothers (who march off in unison to the Naval Recruiter's office after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor) aren't given much individual character; we see them just as the director and scenarists hope we'll see them: as a fighting unit, so brave they don't even have second thoughts. These Fighting Sullivans were instant heroes to a rapturous war-time America, so much so that any hint of complexity in their characters has been scrubbed clean. Edward Ryan (as Al) looks a little puny taking womanly Anne Baxter into his arms, but Thomas Mitchell is wonderful as the patriarch of the family, and the child actors are each quite good. **1/2 from ****