Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A rather silly melodramatic ending spoils this Warner Brothers feature about the unreasoning prejudice against German Americans during World War I. As we learned more and more of Adolph Hitler's intentions you can bet that Jack, Harry, and Albert shelved this particular item.At the turn of the last century Barbara Stanwyck meets and marries German immigrant Otto Kruger and at first they're happy. Kruger in fact has a good job teaching chemistry at a college.All that changes when World War I starts and Stanwyck and Kruger suffer a series of setbacks and tragedies culminating with Kruger losing his citizenship and being deported. Sound familiar? And then the two meet again in France during the war. What happens I won't reveal, but it's kind of off the wall. I guess the moral of the story was don't marry a German.Stanwyck delivers a good performance and Kruger underplays his tragic role beautifully. Still I think this film deserved a better ending.

Yes, this is one of the most tragic stories I have ever seen put to film. A young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) is in love with Ralph Bellamy, but then falls in love with Otto Kruger, a German national who is visiting Bellamy. Stanwyck and Kruger get married, have a child...and a dog...and are living a happy life until World War I breaks out. The community turns against them because of Kruger's former German citizenship, even though before the war he became an American citizen. Their child dies (somewhat unexplained), the dog is tortured to death (also ignore Sara Marie's review on this topic since it is not portrayed, only referred to), and Kruger is fired from his job as a professor. Barely subsisting, Stanwyck goes to live with family, and instead of following her "before Christmas", Kruger returns to Germany a bitter repatriate. There he becomes a spy for the Germans, and by great coincidence Stanwyck (as a worker at a canteen), Kruger, and Bellamy (in the army) all end up at the same place near the front. Kruger is there to spy on troop movements, which will endanger the lives of thousands of Americans including Bellamy and Stanwyck's brother. One last night together, then Stanwyck poisons a last toast of wine between her and Kruger, and they both die before he can pass on his information to the Germans.The problem here is not the story. Yes, you have to suspend belief a bit to imagine the 3 principals would all end up near the front at the same time, but then again, most films require us to suspend belief. The problem is twofold -- the overall pace of the film, and the gaps in the story. Both of these issues are somewhat common in films before what I think of as Hollywood's maturity -- and that maturity took place right around 1932-1933 when this film was made. A couple of years later, I suspect a slightly longer film (this is only 68 minutes long) would have eliminated gaps and filled in the story nicely.Stanwyck is excellent here. Bellamy and Kruger good to very good. Frank Albertson shallow. And, Laura Hope Crews is here as the grandmother (Crews was later Aunt Pittypat in "Gone With The Wind").As indicated, the film has its flaws, but is well worth watching as a reminder that Americans are not always uplifting, kind, and generous people. This is a tragic war story, a paints a sad picture of how our society can behave at times.

"Ever In My Heart" starts off slowly and uneventfully, a pretty pedestrian story that seems both tendentious and predictable. Barbara Stanwyck grows up in a waspy New England town. Her best friend/fiancé (Bellamy) returns from Europe with a German friend (Kruger), who sweeps Stanwyck off her feet. They marry. WWI arrives and the town turns against the couple, who are accused of sympathizing with the Germans. Hardships ensue.Stanwyck is terrific, and Otto Kruger is surprisingly warm and effective in his role. Later in his career he played spies and double agents in scores of WWII films. Ralph Bellamy, of course, played the good-natured slob who lost the girl.The film is a hyperbolic screed against small-town prejudice, and the first half seems forced and simplistic, but picks up in the second half with the onset of the war. I thought the ending was quite powerful and hard to watch, a tribute to actors who know their craft. I appreciate Stanwyck more with each picture, mostly these early ones which are seldom shown.

If you want to see a well crafted film you are in the right place, but if you are in the mood to be cheered up you are absolutely in the wrong place.The film concerns the trials and tribulations of a marriage between a German college professor and his New England socialite wife set in the years 1909-1918. Mary Archer (Barbara Stanwyck) was born to one of those New England families that for some reason thinks it is a great personal accomplishment to exit the birth canal of someone whose ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock. She lives in a town named after her family - Archerville - and it seems you can't walk through the main square without tripping over a monument to one of her past relatives. However, in what seems to be a triumph over environment Mary is a down-to-earth gal that likes people for what they are not where they come from. Mary has had a lifelong friendship and understanding of probable matrimony with Jeff (Ralph Bellamy). However, one day in 1909 he brings over a friend of his, German Hugo Wilbrandt (Otto Kruger). It's love at first sight for Mary and Hugo and the whirlwind courtship and marriage is shocking to Mary's blue blood relatives who receive Hugo somewhat coolly.Hugo gets a job at a small college as a chemistry professor, Mary gives birth to their son, and they get a small dog - a dachshund - that actually becomes a rather important part of the plot. Hugo even becomes an American citizen and the couple's friends give Hugo a loving cup in commemoration of his naturalization - all is good. Into everyone's life comes some tribulations, but it is tragic when the good comes in one lump followed by all of the bad in another lump and it is doubly tragic when the bad has nothing to do with your own failings and everything to do with prejudice and a paranoid frenzy. That's exactly what happens to the Wilbrandts after the sinking of the Lusitania when all of their friends and associates and even relatives turn against them because of Hugo's German heritage. The Wilbrandt family saga is of course fiction. The part of this story that is not fiction is how Americans treated everything and everyone German from sauerkraut to those with German sounding surnames caused by British and French propaganda that was spread to cause Americans to believe that the Germans were savages so that the United States would enter WWI on the Allied side.This film was made when America was at the height of its post-WWI anti-war feelings, and through most of the film I figured that the moral of the story was how this largely pointless war - WWI - had ruined so many lives, including those not directly involved in battle. However, towards the end there is a troubling scene between Jeff and Mary. Jeff admits that Mary has always been the only girl for him and states that the tragic end of her marriage to Hugo was caused by her not "sticking with her own kind". Mary seems to passively agree with Jeff's self serving statement. I would be somewhat horrified if that is what the actual moral was meant to be.I still recommend this one. It's a heart breaker but it is well done at every turn. Even the cinematography with various montages giving you an idea of what is running through Mary's mind at times is very effective.