Robert Joyner
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Bessie Smyth
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
Gary
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
calvinnme
Charles Coburn plays the self made man of industry (B.F. Fulton) who has one child, Polly (Barbara Stanwyck), who is not just his daughter but a confidante and even a protégé of sorts about business matters. Meanwhile, B.F.'s wife (Spring Byington) is pretty much wasted here as she spends the entire film knitting.Polly is in love with an attorney, Robert S. Tasmin III, who refuses to marry Polly until he works his way up to assistant partner. Meanwhile, while Bob is up on that corporate ladder, down on the ground Polly meets her friend Apples (Margaret Lindsay) for a drink in a nearby tavern. Educator and lecturer Tom Brett (Van Heflin), zeroes in on Polly and they start talking politics. Polly seems to fall for Tom because of his Bohemian lifestyle and his stylish rudeness that she never encountered in her circles. Within 24 hours they are married. Brett's good buddy is a leftist radio host, Martin Ainsley (Keenan Wynn), who is always talking down rich people in general and B.F. in particular.Yet it is B.F. who comes across as the good guy. He doesn't try to interfere in his daughter's life and seems to genuinely care about his employees. So Polly and Tom start out marriage in a log cabin in Minnesota where Tom is working on his book. Meanwhile, Polly figures - "How can a little financial boost hurt?". She goes to somebody running a nationwide lecture tour and promises to cover his losses if he will hire her husband. Tom knows nothing of this, but once he is out on the circuit his ideas are a big hit. Ultimately, his books and lectures become very profitable and Brett becomes a rich guy too, a member of FDR's brain trust.Will success change Tom Brett? Was Ainsley a phony in the first place? Will Tom and Polly's marriage work out? Watch and find out.I only gave this a six because the adapted screenplay was a bit of a sprawling saga for just under two hours. This film was supposed to be set from the Great Depression years into the midst of WWII, and it was adapted from a novel written in 1946. B.F. and Polly, symbols of the wealthy class, are showcased as the real people here, and Brett and Ainsley ultimately are the stuffy and unbending types with the same character flaws they have been ascribing to the rich.One big negative I would give it - It doesn't try at all to dress people in the clothes of the period. Stanwyck is wearing the same kind of tailored suit that was popular in 1948 at the beginning of the film - which was the early 1930's, and Heflin, who is supposed to be poor, wears a wrinkled suit from the late 1940s himself.The script is a bit of a muddle - it does not follow the novel, especially the last half , but I'd watch it for the acting and for an object lesson in the production code really REALLY trying to make rich people look like misunderstood benefactors, especially just prior to the red scares. It's definitely NOT boring.
bkoganbing
Barbara Stanwyck plays the title role of B.F.'s Daughter, a very wealthy heiress who marries iconoclastic liberal minded economics professor Van Heflin. B.F. is Charles Coburn and he's one of those people who's two initials everybody knows because he's that wealthy and powerful. Coburn is a firm believer in Herbert Hoover's rugged individualism and he's inculcated those values in his daughter. Stanwyck falls for a man who is the antithesis of her father's values, but he's barely getting by on his professor's salary. She decides to help by using her piece of her father's fortune to send him on a lecture tour for one of his books. Heflin turns out to be a natural, but he's never to know that his wife bought him a career.The novel was written by J.P. Marquand who is best known for those Mr. Moto mysteries. It was published at the beginning of World War II and MGM took several years to finally get it to the screen.Rich heiresses who overpopulated the cinema in the Thirties were a dying breed of movie heroines by the time B.F.'s Daughter came out in 1948. Stanwyck however makes it work and Coburn is in most familiar surroundings as the gruff millionaire.Van Heflin had teamed well with Stanwyck the year before in The Strange Loves Of Martha Ivers and he does well in somewhat lighter fair by comparison. Margaret Lindsay does well as Stanwyck's best friend who marries yuppie Richard Hart who goes to war. The term yuppie was not in use back then, but that is what Hart is. He proves to have the right stuff when that is questioned by Keenan Wynn.Wynn plays a part that seems a dress rehearsal for the role of the news commentator in The Great Man. A little less bitter, but just as cynical and he's got an incredible knack for predicting events wrong.B.F.'s Daughter is a great part for Stanwyck and a great film for her as well.
brucewhain
It may be that my nine-star rating is reactionary. I added one extra star because I thought the six that were displayed was at least one too few.) And it may be that the apparent custom of poo-pooing this movie has resulted from the government authorities of the time - or even the present - and their sympathizers, finding industialist B. F. Fulton's after dinner speech about being confined to a two-by-four room, treated like a schoolboy and "told how to run my own business" a bit over the top.Both B. F. Fulton, played by Charles Coburn, and his daughter Polly, played by Barbara Stanwyck, along with Polly's mother, represent the rich American industrial class in this film, and are drawn far more sympathetically than members of the opposing, intellectual/moralist camp. The moralist male hero of this love-story-with-timely-political-interest (which has been ineptly described as a soap opera) is no exception, as he frequently gets what he thinks are deficient moral standards of his opponents mixed up with just being a member of the opposing camp, and tends to solve his arguments by turning tail and walking out once and for all (before returning) except once notably when Barbara tells him to stay put: so much for alleged female stereotypes.This may be the reason Van Heflin's performance is not so well liked - because of the personality problems of the character he portrays. His friend and cohort, played by Keenan Wynn, if anything, is worse, constantly making aspersions and predictions of high import about people that have no basis in fact on his radio program "There's one good thing though, he's only on 3 days a week," quips B. F. Fulton.) though he is more honest than Heflin's character, openly admitting at one point that he consciously uses his victims - with no regard for veracity of the claims he makes about them - for his own selfish ends.It doesn't seem there can be much argument that the characters of Polly and B. F. Fulton are not played with affection by the two celebrated actors. And that of B. F. Fulton is completely devoid of any visible selfish motive, a wholly good egg. Stanwyck has curtailed her sassier, blacker side to make way for the by-birth-and-training more milque-toasty ingenue, and does so consistently. And she's good too, one slip - a request by this aristocrat with a conscious made early in the film that a friend of her jilted erstwhile fiancé engage himself in insider trading - notwithstanding: this apparently to be interpreted as an uncharacteristic youthful indiscretion.For the most part, the three Fulton family characters represent the epitome of noble goodness and we are taken in when Fulton senior soliloquizes the vanishing of his own breed during his last appearance. According to other reviewers here, the movie uses lines from an original J. P. Marquand novel, and the many sometimes ironic and clever turns of phrase help to ingratiate these characters, increasing the high level of believability and naturalness.Even the scenery and music seem to be something special. (No credit is given for the music in the version I saw.) From the play of the morning light in the Fultons' Park Avenue apartment, as the little blacksmith of their whimsical parlor clock hammers out the chimes of the hour, to the unflattering contrast of oppressiveness in the heavily draped and damasked dining compartment of Polly's formal custom built mansion... From the creepily groaning nonharmonic tones derivative of Wagner's Im Treibhaus, to the more exaltant reminiscence of Tristan und Isolde (for which the former was a study) heard later on - and of course the score no doubt has more to distinguish it than these often alluded to war horses of movie music genre - special care has been taken.
adamshl
Turner Movie Classics featured a Barbara Stanwyck "Festival" this week, and I'm in the process of viewing ten I recorded. I must say, the lady is truly remarkable, giving her all to every performance.In the case of "B. F.'s Daughter," Stanwyck is fully involved, feeling and executing her role with complete mastery. Fortunately, she's surrounded by an excellent cast headed by Van Heflin and Charles Colburn. The script may be flawed, but you'd never know it from the commitment given by this talented cast.Call it a "B" or "women's picture"--"B. F.'s Daughter" held my attention throughout, thanks to its cast and MGM production values.
