Father and Son
(1929)

Country: USA

Genre: Drama

Synopsis

Wealthy businessman and widower Frank Fields falls for Grace Moore, who in reality is only interested in Fields' money, and who leaves the man she was formerly living with, Anton Lebau, in order to marry Fields. Fields' 10-year-old son Jimmy takes a dislike to his father's new wife, who is insensitive to the boy's feelings for his dead mother, and who deliberately causes friction between father and son - eventually causing the boy to leave home. Finally, Fields discovers his wife's duplicity. When Jimmy returns home, and Grace is found murdered in the library, Fields at first suspects Jimmy of being the culprit! But then a phonograph record reveals the true murderer, and father and son have an emotional reconciliation.

Notes

• The New York Times, in a review by Mordaunt Hall, slated this film on its release for what it regarded as multiple implausibilities in its plot. However, the reviewer did grudgingly concede that "Mickey McBan is quite good as Jimmy." (On the other hand, in the same edition of the New York Times, the same reviewer slated Murnau's classic "Nosferatu" - which had finally been released in the US seven years after its premiere in Germany - so perhaps his opinion on "Father and Son" is not to be taken too seriously.)

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