Of Human Hearts (1938)

(On Cable TV, April 2020) How much you like Of Human Hearts will depend, I suppose, on your tolerance for nostalgic melodramatic Americana spanning decades of conflict between father and son from the 1850s to the American Civil War. Also, if you can tolerate a film whose climax is President Lincoln chastising the protagonist for not writing more often to his mother. (It’s not a dream sequence.) The drama feels unremarkable, the production values aren’t particularly impressive, and the characters are contrived. Just about the only bright spot is James Stewart’s role in the second part of the film, but he, too, is saddled with a mediocre script. Clearly optional for most, Of Human Hearts was once a crowd-pleaser, but now it just feels like it’s barely worth a shrug.