Heimweh

I'm not going to say much about this movie...because it is, of course, very good...BUT the end is what i want to talk about. I'm a guy so it humbles me a little to make the following comment: It makes you so happy to see that Lassie has overcome the most impossible odds just to meet Joe at school, Ya just start bawling like a lil baby! they will be some of the happiest tears you'll ever cry. 9 out of 10 just because the end makes up for any downfalls the movie might have!(not that it has many)

A classic. A dear story of a impoverished English family who has to sell their prized possession, a collie dog named Lassie, to make ends meet. I never tire of seeing this movie whenever it plays, even though I own the DVD. Make sure to get out a handkerchief or some tissues for, surely, you will be tearful, if not totally slobbering. It is that touching and endearing. It is without time constraints, veneer or facade. This was the first Lassie movie and showcases the first Lassie. Now, in 2012, as I write this review, there is Lassie 10, a direct descendant of the original brilliant collie. Again, the collie escapes to travel many miles from Scotland to England to reunite with his master. He endures great hardships on his journey. The movie is lustrous, brilliant, and excellently acted with young ELizabeth Taylor. Just a lovely classic movie, as modern as it is old fashioned, yet not old fashioned at all. I enjoyed the speech patterns and scenery. A movie that is for any age, but remember, get out the tissues. What an endearing movie.

I sat down tonight to watch this movie, thinking it would be good, warm-hearted fare at the end of a hard day at work. I couldn't watch it. Just. Could. NOT.

I spent the first 15 minutes of the movie crying. I started out teary-eyed for the few brief minutes where Lassie and her boy (played by a roughly 12-yr-old Roddy MacDowell) were together, knowing from the basic plot of the movie (father sells dog to man who lives hundreds of miles away) that the boy and the dog would soon be separated. From there I moved on to full-blown tears when Roddy comes home from school and asks his parents where Lassie is. Anyone who's ever had a dog or ever loved a dog will not be able to take this scene.

We then see where Lassie is living now ... in a kennel, on a rich man's estate who has tons of dogs. Lassie is laying in her kennel all listless because she misses her family. (More tears!) A mean caretaker of the animals tells Lassie, "I'll make you eat even if I have to shove your food down your throat." That did it for me! That was 15 minutes into the movie, I was crying my eyes out, and I said to myself there's no way I can sit through another 75 minutes of this torment of seeing Lassie and her boy separated, of seeing all the terrible ordeals that Lassie must go through before she is reunited with her boy.

I fast-forwarded to the end, thinking the ending would make me happy, and would make up for the 15 minutes of sobbing. Well ... it did and it didn't. I saw the last 2 or so minutes of the film, beginning with a much skinnier Lassie limping on 3 legs to meet Roddy at his school. (How did she get so skinny? What happened to her front paw that made her not be able to walk on it? I don't want to know!) The scene is so touching, so heart-breaking, I don't think anyone could watch it without bursting out sobbing like a baby. Young Roddy did a terrific acting job when he showed his glee and love at seeing his precious Lassie again.

I've read the other comments here, and understand that Lassie went through many trials while traveling back home from Scotland to Yorkshire. I'm glad I fast-forwarded the movie; I don't think I could've taken those scenes! If you ever need a good cry, just watch this movie. I can't recall any other movie I've ever seen that has stirred such emotionality in me, and certainly none that has ever made me cry so hard, both from sadness and happiness and a dozen other emotions.

This review is based on seeing 17 of the 90 minutes of this film. I think if I saw all 90 minutes, I'd be drowning in a pool made from my own tears right now. I don't have enough Kleenex in the house to watch this whole danged movie!

Can I be honest? I wasn't expecting to love this film, I thought it would be childish and predictable. How wrong I was, Lassie Come Home is delightful! Sweet, moving and exciting, I absolutely loved the film. The cinematography is beautiful, and the scenery is lush and like looking at a watercolour painting. The music is also gorgeous, memorable and lyrical with amazing orchestration. The direction, script and story are also first rate, the script being intelligent, the direction assured and the story well paced. Also excellent was the acting, Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor are appealing as the children, Nigel Bruce gives a gruff, aggressive yet sympathetic performance with some Dr Watson-like facial expressions and Edmund Gwenn who I know best from the original Miracle on 34th Street is outstanding as Rowlie. What made the film though was Lassie, an astonishing canine performance from Pal, who acts so convincingly and moves as swiftly as the wind. Also Lassie's pining were so achingly sad, you couldn't help feel for the poor dog, especially in the very poignant ending. And yes, I cried when Toots died. Overall, I loved Lassie Come Home, though I do think it is deserving of a restoration. 10/10 Bethany Cox

A magnificent British collie struggles to cover the hundreds of miles that separate her from the family she loves.

LASSIE COME HOME is one of the truly great family films. Crafted with care by MGM and based on the classic novel by Eric Knight, it will strike a warm response in the heart of anyone who has ever loved a dog.

The production values are first rate and the color photography is spectacular. While the scenery & filming locations are strictly Western North America, they nevertheless make evocative stand-ins for the settings in the book. It might be worth the viewer's time to check the relationship of the Yorkshire Moors with the Scottish Highlands on a map, so as to better appreciate the phenomenal journey which the dog undertakes.

The casting is excellent throughout: Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester & Roddy McDowall as the poor, proud family which must sell their only treasure, Lassie; Nigel Bruce as the gruffly tenderhearted Duke which buys the dog; a young Dame Elizabeth Taylor plays his lively granddaughter. J. Pat O'Malley portrays the brutal dog handler employed by the Duke.

Along her journey Lassie encounters old folks who need her companionship (Dame May Whitty & real-life husband Ben Webster, in his last film role), a traveling tinker who values her protection (Edmund Gwenn), and suspicious sheepmen on the watch for killer dogs (Alan Napier & Arthur Shields).

Lassie is played by Pal, a male dog trained by the celebrated Rudd Weatherwax (1907-1985), who was responsible for generations of Lassies which appeared in movies & television. Pal gives a remarkable performance, providing the very heart & soul of the film.

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Eric Mowbray Knight was born in Yorkshire, England, on April 10, 1897. Moving to America in 1912, he became a student in New York, but left to join the Canadian Armed Forces with the outbreak of World War One. In 1932 he published a collection of his wartime letters - Portrait Of A Flying Yorkshireman. Later came two novels which made good use of authentic Yorkshire dialect: Invitation To Life (1934) and Song On Your Bugles (1937). He didn't think much of his 1940 children's book, Lassie Come-Home and was very surprised at its great success. His next novel, This Above All (1941), a World War Two romance, was also popular. Knight joined the United States Army and rose to the rank of Major. Working with an Army film unit under the direction of Frank Capra, Eric Knight was tragically killed in a plane crash off the coast of Suriname on January 15, 1943. MGM dedicated LASSIE COME HOME, which was released later that year, to his memory.

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The snatch of ballad Edmund Gwenn is singing while shaving in his first scene is "I Dreamt That I Dwelt In Marble Halls" from the 1843 operetta The Bohemian Girl by Michael William Balfe (1808-1870).