Ever in My Heart

This poignant and graceful doomed-love weeper deals with a facet of American history rarely explored. In a beautifully restrained performance, Barbara Stanwyck plays a Daughter of the American Revolution who marries gentle German immigrant Otto Kruger. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, they become victimized by anti-German sentiments.

With tasteful understatement and an unusual attention to period detail, director Archie L. Mayo paints a vivid tableau of social intolerance that must have been quite daring in its time (the scars of the Great War were still fresh in '33). The writers, unfortunately, couldn't resist a nosedive into Mata Hari-like spy machinations, an eleventh hour plot contrivance that strikes an indelicate note. Even so, the film's quiet sensitivity stays with you long after.

With Ralph Bellamy (as the inevitable jilted boyfriend), Ruth Donnelly, Laura Hope Crews, and Clara Blandick.