Powerful

Lack of good storyline.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Cary Grant (Ernie Mott), Ethel Barrymore (Ma Mott), Barry Fitzgerald (Twite), June Duprez (Ada), Jane Wyatt (Aggie Hunter), George Coulouris (Jim Mordiney), Dan Duryea (Lew Tate), Konstantin Shayne (Ike Weber), Eva Leonard Boyne (Ma Chalmers), Morton Lowry (Taz), Helene Thimig (sister nurse), William Challee (Knocker), Joseph Vitale (Cash), Roman Bohnen (Dad Pettyjohn), Renie Riano (Flo), Queenie Vassar (Ma Snowden), Art Smith (Marjoriebanks), Rosalind Ivan (Mrs Tate), Walter Soderling (Pa Floom), Bill Wolfe (blind man), Eric Wilton, David Thursby (prison guards), Sammy Blum, Alec Harford (drunks), Skelton Knaggs (Slush), Forrester Harvey (bloke), Tiny Jones (woman).Director/screenplay: CLIFFORD ODETS, from 1943 novel by Richard Llewellyn. Cinematography: George Barnes. Film editor: Roland Gross. Music: Hanns Eisler. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Jack Okey. Producer: David Hempstead. Associate producer: Sherman L. Todd.Copyright 20 October 1944 by RKO Radio. New York opening at the Strand: 17 November 1944. U.S. release: 22 September 1944. U.K. release: 16 April 1945. Aust.: 12 April 1945. 10,382 feet. 115 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Poverty forces Cockney mother and son into crime.NOTES: "None But the Lonely Heart" was selected as the Best Film of 1944 by the National Board of Review. Ethel Barrymore and June Duprez (along with eight other players) were cited for Best Acting.COMMENT: A haunting and moving film. Great playwright that he is (Golden Boy, Waiting for Lefty), Odets — in his first try — proves that he is just as forceful in film directing. The dramatic scenes in this picture come across with an intensity that mere words are powerless to describe.Production designer Mordecai Gorelik's sets impress, and the players, led by Grant, Barrymore, Fitzgerald and Duprez, are absolutely flawless.Unfortunately, despite its power and conviction, the movie was not as successful as Fox's adaptation of an earlier Llewellyn novel, "How Green Was My Valley". Yet it has similar themes of poetry and idealism struggling against a depressing background of poverty and want. "None But the Lonely Heart", rich in atmosphere and realistic effects, is just as memorable — and is perhaps a braver and more faithful translation of its author's ideas and ideals.

Just like John Wayne, Cary Grant was skilled at playing himself. Here the boy from Bristol tries and fails to play a Londoner - his accent is less plausible than the American actors around him. He sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb in a 'spiv-suit' attempting to portray a cockney 'wide-boy' while Hollywood's idea of thirties London stinks of caricatures and stereotypes - the Jewish moneylender Ike Weber and the Irish 'son of the sod' Henry Twite, played by that excruciating 'stock' Irishman Brry Fitzgerald . Mawkishly sentimental as only Hollywood could be, it struggles aimlessly to create any believable character, setting or plot. The only thing that kept me watching was the expectation of a shoot-out of some sort. God knows where it was filmed. And, to cap it all, Grant apparently was Oscar-nominated for it! Acted by the cast of 'Brighton Rock' there may have been some veracity but I doubt any English viewer could watch this without being astonished at just how stereotypical it is. Of its era and location - it's a construct for American eyes only.

This film is renowned for starting off Ethel Barrymore on her belated screen career (after a couple of tryouts made much earlier, including one – the as-yet unwatched RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS {1933} – with siblings Lionel and John!); she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her fine work here – in all, the legendary star would be nominated four times in the 10-year span until her death. Two other notable elements to the movie under review is its being one of only two titles helmed by respected playwright Odets (the other being THE STORY ON PAGE ONE {1959} which, again, I own but still need to go through) and the fact that it landed nominal lead Cary Grant his second and last Academy Award nod (having previously been shortlisted for George Stevens' romantic drama PENNY SERENADE {1941}) until being bestowed with an Honorary "Lifetime Achievement" golden statuette in 1970 (and, in fact, he mentioned these two directors specifically in that speech). The film was based on a novel by Richard Llewellyn, whose "How Green Was My Valley" had just been brought to the screen by John Ford and managed to sweep, or should I say swipe, five Oscars including Best Picture and Direction at the 1942 ceremony: while an undeniably excellent effort, it notoriously triumphed over such superior candidates as the seminal debut of both Orson Welles and John Huston – namely CITIZEN KANE and THE MALTESE FALCON respectively! It is safe to assume that NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART clearly aimed at repeating the success of HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY: while it did garner a total of four nominations (the other two being in the Best Editing and Dramatic/Comedy Score departments), the narrative in this case did not quite have the necessary to obtain a comparable level of quality. Among Llewellyn's other credits were NOOSE (1948), a little-known but pretty good British noir he personally adapted from his play and which co-starred Maltese character actor Joseph Calleia. Anyway, Grant here is a wanderer forever flanked by a pitbull who returns to his London home intending to stay for only a short while, but two events (learning of shopkeeper mother Barrymore's terminal illness – their relationship is otherwise strained – and falling for June Duprez – married to scoundrel George Coulouris) lead to a change of mind and eventually ground him. For the young woman's sake, he becomes embroiled in her husband's criminal schemes (one of their victims being Konstantin Shayne, a close acquaintance of Barrymore's, in a robbery sequence which, along with a car crash later on, constitute action highlights amid the general verbosity) and, to complicate matters further, the old woman is herself arrested for dealing in stolen goods! In the end, while resigning himself to his mother's loss, he follows her advise to find a "good" rather than a "cheap" woman – and he settles on musician Jane Wyatt (the title, in fact, refers to a Tchaikovsky composition she plays on her violin: she had loved him all along, but was willing to sacrifice her personal happiness after Grant professed his feelings for Duprez to her!).Making for unusual wartime fare – which proves interesting without being particularly compelling – the film certainly deserves a mark for trying. Still, the London detail is unconvincing and the cast decidedly variable: the afore-mentioned Grant (rather effective in a rare depiction of his true Cockney origins, apart from the final descent into bathos), Barrymore, Coulouris and Shayne come off best, as well as Barry Fitzgerald (also in HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY and who made Oscar history that same year by being nominated twice for his role in GOING MY WAY – being thus in direct competition with the star in the Best Actor stakes while emerging the winner, and therefore Barrymore's male counterpart, in the Supporting category!); on the other hand, Wyatt and Duprez are somewhat weak under the circumstances, whereas Dan Duryea is thoroughly wasted as a bartender.

You'll go a long way to find a greater fan of Cliff Odets than me so I was interested to see how he'd handle a very English story written by a Welshman with a flair for poetic language. Odets himself of course had a poetic way with words but the East Side of New York is more than the geographical three thousand miles from the East End of London. Most of the reviews I've read on IMDb were written by Americans and/or non-English people who, not unnaturally, have no idea how wayward the 'cockney' accents are - Dan Duryea, for example, doesn't even attempt one - and one reviewer even referred to Grant's own background in London when in fact he was born and brought up in Bristol a good two hundred miles away. Despite her failure to master cockney Ethel Barrymore walks away with the acting honours and fully deserved her Best Supporting Actress gong and despite what other reviewers have written I felt that the cast were in three or four different films with no sense of an ensemble at work. Given that he adapted the novel himself and also directed Odets can blame no one but himself for the lack of 'Odets type' dialogue, in fact on only one or two occasions do we hear anything even approaching his trademark speech. On the other hand Odets excelled at chronicling social injustice which is the same the world over and he clearly instructed the cameraman to stress light and shade throughout. Interesting rather than memorable but certainly worth seeing.