I'll Give My Life

This is not much of a film, but it is a good story. It is in fact just a story and nothing else, and the film just tells the story. The actors are well known from other films, mainly as supporting roles, like Ray Collins and Angie Dickinson, and they just do their job here. The story is interesting, because it happens to so many families. Ray Collins is a successful engineer with great enterprises, and his life's dream is that his only son will follow him in his footsteps and take over the firm. He doesn't. He chooses to become a minister instead, and what is worse, a missionary in New Guinea, an area well known for almost unavoidable infections of malaria, a damnation for life. The father just has to accept it and can do nothing about it but face the consequences, and here you are: the son is infected with serious fever in New Guinea and can't carry on his work but has to leave his task unfinished. The father's reaction to this is not convincing: He decides to fulfil his son's work but in his own way. Ray Collins was a great actor, he always made an impression although he never showed up except in minor roles, and this was one of his last more prominent roles. It's not a great film, it's like a novelletta, a magazine story, and the tragedy of the lost son could have been developed into an interesting drama. Instead it gets lost in sanctimony.