Veteran director/producer George Stevens"" film is often considered the second film of his "American trilogy," positioned betweenA Place in the Sun (1951)andGiant (1956).The film was a superb re-envisioning of the insightful Nicholas Ray, Eisenhower-Era melodrama about the family,Bigger Than Life (1956)- hat also critiqued the suffocating and claustrophobic conformity of 1950s middle-class life in an earlier era.Zod implored Jor-El, his childhood friend, to join his movement: "Join me.Help me save our race.We""ll start anew." Zod argued for seizing he ""Codex"" that had genetically imprinted and predeterminedly decided the societal roles and fates of all newborns - to eliminate what he called "degenerative bloodlines.And there were only 10 minutes remaining to save Martha.Batman promised Superman: "Martha won""t die tonight." He learned from Alfred that Russian Knyazev""s previously-cloned phone and his thugs had been tracked to an abandoned warehouse near the port of Gotham City.Your grandfather - he died in Australia in a penal colony.And your father, he was a good man too.Bad accident that.And your mother?Sean: She""s dead.America, when I was twelve.Father Lonergan: (piously) I""ll remember her in the mass tomorrow, Sean.(sternly) You""ll be there, seven o""clock.Sean: Sure I will.In one of the film""s most fanciful, breathtaking, painterly scenes of the picturesque, pastoral Irish countryside (and the entrance scene for the film""s star actress), Sean walks to an emerald-green grassy area of foliage where black-faced sheep are herded by a collie.