Part family melodrama, part industrial documentary, part war propaganda, part conservative allegory, An American Romance was King Vidor's most heartfelt project of the forties. The $3,000,000 Technicolor spectacular occupied him for over two years during World War II and summed up everything he believed about the industrial and immigrant sources of American strength. Variety predicted that "this vehicle may well be the one to again establish Vidor at the pinnacle." And Louis B. Mayer emerged from the preview to call An American Romance "the greatest picture our company has ever made." Would that it were so! Perhaps it was the fifteen (!) screenwriters and two wartime censorship boards that so homogenized the script. This labor saga of a Czech immigrant (Brian Donlevy) who rises from coal miner to steel/automobile/aircraft magnate fell victim to generally dreadful reviews. MGM responded by cutting half an hour from the original 151-minute running time. Chief among the saving graces is Vidor's precise and stunning Technicolor production design-which can be appreciated tonight in this rare 35mm screening. It is difficult to minimize the depth of betrayal Vidor felt at the rejection of the film, which ended his twenty year association with MGM and inaugurated the spiritual desperation of his postwar films. Scott Simmon