the audience applauded

Great Film overall

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This film use to be on television all the time in the 60's and now hardly ever. It came on just a few hours ago and I immediately sat down to watch it as I wondered if it would be as good as I remembered it to be. It was actually better as I picked up on a lot of things I may have taken for granted.I wont go into what has already been said.... sad movie that starts you tearing up mid way through right to the end. Towards the end when eldest brother is delivering his youngest sister to her new home he stops to look in the window of one of the other families where another brother has been taken in. The brother is playing cards with his "new" sister with the parents in the background sitting talking and doing things. The reflection on the window is of him looking in, the sled with his sister in the background, and then you see him leave and start to walk up the road dragging the sled behind. Wow.... this scene was so powerful you wanted to ball right then. Amazing film making and score...definitely more appreciated now than before.

CAMERON MITCHELL and GLYNIS JOHNS are young newlyweds trying to find their place on arrival in Wisconsin as Scottish immigrants. They're soon pioneering with him finding work as a logger (thanks to bossman ALAN HALE, JR.) and gradually start raising a family of six children.Some charming moments as the kids grow and interact with parents and neighbors, but then the soap suds angle gets the upper hand in the script. First the youngest son gets diphtheria but recovers. Then the father becomes ill but fails to survive the illness. And finally, the brood of children are left orphaned when their mother dies of typhoid fever.The last third of the film has the youngest son promising his dying mother that he'll find good parents for the kids instead of sending them off to an orphanage and the Christmas theme works nicely here in time for a happy ending.It's a bit schmaltzy at times--a sort of poverty story a la A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN with a different setting--but at times it has the ability to hook you into the story and really care about those kids. Among them, blonde PATTY McCORMACK stands out although given little to do. REX THOMPSON does a nice job as the "man of the family" who fulfills his mother's wish in finding families to take the kids.Summing up: Nice, but could have been a lot better with a finer cast and director. Too predictable right up until the end.

I love Glynnis Johns and I have always thought Cameron Mitchell was a very handsome man and a pretty good actor, so I don't know how I have missed this movie all these years. This is a tear-jerker if there ever was one. Yes, you keep waiting for that Hollywood ending but you finally realize it isn't going to turn out that way. Back in those days,loosing both parents was not so uncommon as it is today, but there was usually family to take the kids, at least the youngest ones. This one was so sad because the mother told the boy to decide where to place the children, and he did everything in his power to fulfill her last wishes. It is so powerful because it was told through his eyes as an adult. Maybe the producers should have added one more scene (like they did with Casablanca) - one where all the children finally get back together. As Robbie marched off over that hill pulling that sled, I wasn't crying, but I was very close to it. And no, they don't make them like this anymore. I, for one, enjoyed it immensely.

If you come from a large family, or wish you did, you'll love this film. You'll cry your way through most of it, but you will love it. I took one point off because you need to be emotionally mature to watch it. Most people nowadays won't appreciate it because it takes a looking outside of yourself and an appreciation for a tougher time and a tougher nature than the Gameboy Generation knows. But if you have a heart large enough, you will find room in it for this film just as the oldest brother finds a warm home for each of his siblings in a cold world.http://www.arielion.com