Tuesday with Cary Grant

None But the Lonely Heart

See this grim motion picture to understand who was Cary Grant. It’s not an especially good, let alone great, film. It is melodramatic, pedantic and overacted. The audience is never fully invested in the characters. Direction by playwright Clifford Odets suffocates the drama. But this interesting mother-son picture with leftist ideals contains compelling scenes.

You can do worse than watching an overlong movie with Jane Wyatt—the warm mother in TV’s Father Knows Best—Ethel Barrymore and Cary Grant. The simple story of a son gone wrong (Mr. Grant) doing right by his cancer-stricken mother (Barrymore) gets mired in subplots, superfluous scenes and self-conscious production. The film’s poverty-themed class struggle in black-and-white with brick buildings by street lamps emitting glows of cinematic lighting is skewed. London’s east end is too staged. You know it’s bound to be bleak by the way Mother looks at her son’s dog.

Peace, that’s what I’m looking for. I want peace. With happy hearts a…