No Greater Glory February 5, 2006

NO GREATER GLORY
1934, 117 mins. Restored 35mm print from Sony Pictures Repertory. Directed by Frank Borzage. With George Breakstone, Jimmy Butler. L. P. Hartley?s famous epigraph ?The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there,? could apply to the little-known masterworks of Frank Borzage. No Greater Glory is among the finest of Borzage?s affecting tales. Focusing on immigrant American struggles, Borzage?s perceptive view of working-class life evokes the emotional plenitude of American experience before World War II?feelings and conflicts ignored in movies for baby boomers and Gen-Xers. Borzage?s masterly vision foreshadowed Italian neorealism, the closest equivalent to his now foreign world of politics and spirituality.