
Rudolph Klein, a German spy, tries to persuade his brother Herman, a trusted employee of the Spencer Steel Works, to blow up the munitions factory. When World War I breaks out, Spencer's son Graham decides to enlist in the army, but when his mother Natalie, a cold-hearted social butterfly, objects, he wavers in his decision.


A Furnace Named Family: How the Film Melts Steel and Sentiment Together The camera opens on a cavernous foundry at twilight, orange slag cascading like liquid sunrise; in that instant we sense we are not in for polite parlor melodrama but inside a myth-making crucible. Director J.G. Hawks and scenarist Thompson Bucha...

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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

Reginald Barker

Reginald Barker
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" A Furnace Named Family: How the Film Melts Steel and Sentiment Together The camera opens on a cavernous foundry at twilight, orange slag cascading like liquid sunrise; in that instant we sense we are not in for polite parlor melodrama but inside a myth-making crucible. Director J.G. Hawks and scenarist Thompson Buchanan compress Mary Roberts Rinehart’s serialized wartime potboiler into 78 minutes of nitrate fever dream, yet every frame feels chiseled rather than cut. Girders bisect the screen ..."
Edward McWade
Thompson Buchanan, Mary Roberts Rinehart, J.G. Hawks, Charles Kenyon
United States

