“...Four Sons (is) that rarity, a Ford film that is designed as an ‘art' and ‘prestige' picture.... Financially, Four Sons was an enormous success, and created a permanent attendance-record at the Roxy Theatre in New York.... The echoes of Murnau and Sunrise are everywhere - even literally, since the same village set is re-used. But even though it was the filmic fashion of the time, accepted by both critics and public, the deliberate slowness of pace doesn't seem a happy method for Ford. One has the constant feeling that he wants to throw in some lively bits of business, or some spectacular moments of sheer showmanship, and is prevented from doing so out of respect for his material....

“The camerawork is stunning (especially in an underplayed, studio-filmed battlefield ‘exterior'), the gauze-shots lovely, and yet it seems to just miss being a front-rank Ford. He has often been careless with detail and it has never seemed to matter, yet here the costumes, cars and decor for a pre-World War One New York are so blatantly those of 1928 that they stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. So many of his German ‘types' are either just stereotypes, or his familiar black-shawled Irishwomen trying to look a bit Teutonic....

“Despite initial disappointment, however, Four Sons' weaknesses seem to recede on later viewings, and its virtues to become stronger. It certainly gains from a familiarity with Ford's later films....”