Pilgrimage (1933)

BACKGROUND
 

Pilgrimage, which was shot entirely on a Fox Studio soundstage, was the first time since Four Sons that Ford truly explored the kind of expressionist lighting and staging that he had learned from Murnau. The film is based on a short story by I. A. L. Wylie, the same author who wrote the source material for Four Sons. 
 

McBride considers Pilgrimage to be Ford’s first great film finding it: “overpoweringly moving.” He also reports that Norman Foster, who plays the son, hated Ford so much that he: “started shouting when I asked him about his experiences with him.” 
 

PLOT SUMMARY

A widow obsessed with losing her son, prevents his marriage to a neighbor’s daughter by enlisting him to fight in WWI where he dies. She later visits his grave in Europe as an honored Gold Star Mother only to experience a crisis of conscience.