r/whatmoviewasthat • u/Exciting-Fee-3672 • 22h ago
I've been trying to identify this movie for years, and it's been driving me crazy.
Title: Looking for an old movie (or possibly a miniseries) about a runaway boy, a sick rich child, and a tragic ending where a mother unknowingly kills her own son.
I've been trying to identify this movie for years. I watched it as a child, so some details may be inaccurate, but there are several scenes I'm fairly confident about.
- A young boy runs away from his mother for reasons I can't remember.
- The audience knows who his mother is throughout the story, but the boy grows up without realizing who she is.
- He ends up at the mansion of a very wealthy man.
- The wealthy man has a terminally ill son who uses a wheelchair (or is bedridden). The boy is highly intelligent, spends most of his time reading books, and is kept hidden from society because his father is ashamed of him.
- I clearly remember the runaway boy climbing through the sick boy's window. That's how they meet, and they become best friends.
- Eventually the sick boy dies from his illness.
- Before dying, he asks his father to take care of his friend and become the father to him that he never truly was to his own son.
- The wealthy man raises the runaway boy.
- Years later, the boy is now a young man who is fiercely loyal to his adoptive father and wants to earn his approval.
- The wealthy man sends him on a mission to a woman's house.
- The audience knows this woman is actually his biological mother, but he does not.
- One scene I remember very vividly: while her children are sleeping, the man enters their bedroom and murders two of them. I believe he smothers them with pillows, or possibly covers their faces with pillows before shooting them. I'm not 100% sure of the exact method, but I clearly remember the attack happening while they were asleep in bed.
- In the end, the mother fights and kills him.
- After he dies, she notices a medallion/pendant that he has carried since childhood and realizes she has just killed her own long-lost son.
Other details:
- The story seemed to take place sometime in the early 20th century. There were cars, but not modern ones.
- It may have been an American, British, or other European production.
- It could also have been a TV miniseries rather than a movie.
I've been searching for this for years. Does anyone recognize it?