The greatest movie ever!

Better Late Then Never

A Disappointing Continuation

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Of all the major Hollywood studios of the 30's, Warners Bros were the most engaged with the threat posed in Europe by Hitler and entrusted the great Michael Curtiz with the direction of this Oscar winning short which lavished the blandishments of Technicolor and the charismatic presence of Claude Rains flanked by a classy supporting cast - including Montague Love as George Washington - on this reminder of the role played in the Revolution by a super-patriotic Jew who according to this account even died reciting the US Constitution on his deathbed.Given the current situation in Europe, 'Sons of Liberty' avoids overtly identifying the British by name as the bad guys, and most of the film's accents - including Rains' - are impeccably British, one notable exception being the 'March of Time' style narrator who occasionally interjects to clarify or speed things up.

. . . such as lead actor Claude Rains as Revolutionary War financier Haym Saloman and director Michael Curtiz, because Tinsel Town wished to show that American Jews not only were inventing the American Dream through what the then predominantly Jewish-run movie studios were throwing up on the Big Screen, but they also were responsible for financing the establishment of America itself, which surely would have capitulated to the Tory Fat Cats loyal to London, without the influx of cash raised by Mr. Saloman. The Baby Boomer generation became aware of Mr. Saloman's story when he was on the postage stamps in 1975. The "Greatest Generation" of WWII knew his history from this SONS OF LIBERTY short. However, today's Millenials have no idea that America was bought and paid for by Jewish funds, or that many of the donors (including Mr. Saloman himself, as shown in SONS OF LIBERTY's closing scene) died in poverty due to their war-time financial sacrifices. As always, the "Christian" Fat Cats had the last laugh, all the way to the formerly-Jewish run banks!

In 1939, as the world perched on the brink of World War, "Sons of Liberty" served to remind the American public of the sacrifices necessary to preserve our freedoms, particularly freedom of religion. And its focus a Jewish patriot might be seen as an appeal to recognize the contributions of Jewish Americans during the American Revolution and to sympathize with Jews who were undergoing religious persecution in Germany and elsewhere.One has to wonder how much of the story of "Sons of Liberty" is true. It feels like a fabrication with only the most basic facts being true. The use of the breathless voice-over, sounding like an episode of Zorro, only serves to heighten the feeling that "facts" were embellished and even created.As a young student in the public school systems, I was familiar with the dramatized and sterilized versions of history--where the motives were so pure and the lines of conflict so clear. Such colorful but biased reconstructions of history only served as impediments in my later search for historical truth."Sons of Liberty" is so overly dramatized that its value as a revolutionary recounting is practically nil. It is understandable that Hollywood might produce such a piece in 1939 given the world situation. But now, its super-stylized, bombastic approach to story telling--with chronological events so condensed and orchestral flourishes for every scene--makes it only an interesting remnant of the run up to WWII.

Another Oscar-winning Technicolor short, a product this time of Warner Bros. rather than MGM; featuring the involvement of possibly their top director and such first-rate actors as Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard, it is handled in the studio's recognizable style. The plot is a recreation of a historical incident from America's infancy, with various immigrants (led by a Jew, Haym Salomon) uniting into the titular 'resistance' group – that was also mentioned in D. W. Griffith's America (1924) – against the occupying British forces. With WWII looming, this clearly made for a stirring patriotic call to the masses: however, even when taken on its own merits, the film proves interesting (especially for the unenlightened) and entertaining.