Eran cinco hermanos

I first saw this film as an eight year old during the war. I regularly showed the video version to my high school history classes during my teaching career. Even though it was on the edge of being brutally hard to take when the Sullivan family learned of the death of all five of their sons, my students regarded the film as one which showed a great deal about the home front and about the sacrifices this generation made to the country.

War movies are typically shown on TV for Memorial Day, and this one about tops them all. On the one hand, it's old-Hollywood style so you have to know how to "watch" it--a woman carrying a big stuffed animal is pregnant, for example. On the other hand, there's minimal war footage and jingoism, uncommon for a wartime movie. It shows, rather than tells, which gives it much more power. Deeply moving after more than half a century.

This movie is a very tender, touching tale of a family's great loss during WWII. I believe it teaches not just the love a family should share, but also the horror of war. Too often we see people die in war and don't realize that they were once children with dreams, hopes and their whole lives ahead of them.

This movie (although the closing scene seems a bit silly now) is an excellent testament to the people who fought and died in war.

I was a boy of 14 at boarding school in England when I saw this film on release. The memory of it is with me still at 75 so it must have had some merit emotionally if nothing else. The second world war was still on and we were all aware of the horrors daily being brought to notice. Fellow pupils were finding parent(s) and brothers/sisters lost in the conflict. The film I recall we who saw it went back a second time. Thomas Mitchell as the father was the dominant character in the film.I still think of him as a forerunner to characters played later by Ernest Borgnine who was in the same mould. Anne Baxter was not yet at her best but was a sympathetic player demanded by her sorely tested motherhood in this film.

This is one of the few movies I've seen that really made me cry. I agree with others who wrote about this and would definitely put it up there with The Best Years of our Lives as one of the great World War II pictures. Saving Private Ryan didn't move me as much as this mainly because we really don't get to know Private Ryan (or his brothers, for that matter). In this movie, we get to know all of the brothers, especially the oldest and the youngest. It did feel a bit like the Waltons in the first hour (were homes really that apple pie in Iowa in the 30s?) But watching the boys come of age and struggle with basic teenage issues, and then watching them enlist, made their fates all the more powerful. Yes, I knew what was going to happen but I was moved all the same. This movie should be required viewing for everyone who adored Saving Private Ryan.