The Southerner

source: The Southerner

The famed French director, Jean Renoir, spent a few years in Hollywood during WWII making films before ultimately returning home to continue his career following the defeat of the Nazis. "The Southerner" is one of these Hollywood-produced films made by Renoir. The film begins on a cotton field and one of the pickers has a heart attack. As he lies there dying, he urges his nephew (Zachary Scott) to get his own land and give up the hard life of a picker. So in the next scene, Scott gets his boss to agree to let him farm some old land that's been sitting vacant for many years. The idea sounds good, but when Scott sees the land he wonders if he has a prayer of making it work, as the farmhouse is almost completely in ruins and the place looks like a disaster area. Naturally, times are very, very difficult for the family and it's an interesting portrayal of a tough bygone way of life that few today in the USA can remember. Overall, it's unrelentingly depressing—and the family's life is made more so by an evil neighbor (J. Carroll Naish) who seems to delight in making them more miserable! But how can they possibly make it with so many things stacked against them? Tune in and see for yourself. While the film is not always pleasant, it does make for compelling viewing—you just can't stop watching the family fighting to eke out a meager existence. In this sense, it's very reminiscent of the film "The Good Earth"—but set in rural Southern America. And, historically speaking, it's an important film—mostly because aside from this, Hollywood tended to ignore this lifestyle. I was thinking about giving the film an 8 (it's very, very good), but I deducted a point for Beulah Bondi's over the top performance. By the way, despite Beulah Bondi looking and sounding like a more ancient, more annoying and insane version of Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies" in this film, she isn't actually that old when she made the film (she was in her 50s). It seems Bondi played so many old women parts people just assumed she was an old woman—even when making films in her 30s and 40s.

During his American exile period Jean Renoir turned out some really interesting films. The best of these is The Southerner which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director. This film is clearly the ancestor of that Sally Field classic from the Eighties, Places In The Heart. The Southerner is the story of a poor white family in the rural south named Tucker. Zachary Scott who wants very much to farm on his own land takes an option from Paul Harvey and plants cotton on it. He was advised by friend Charles Kemper that it's a whole lot easier to be working in a factory or working as a farmhand on someone else's land as you're guaranteed a paycheck and you won't starve. But that goes against that great frontier tradition of 40 acres and a mule and the people who homesteaded and developed their own land. It's an ingrained American dream, not like the Europe where Jean Renoir was taking a hiatus from due to World War II. In fact The Southerner is a great tribute to Renoir's ability to soak up American culture and values. He really depicts the rural American South quite well. What's not shown here are black people, but in point of fact they would not be sharecropping near any poor white people at that time. Still the lack of them is a major flaw in the film. Both Zachary Scott and Betty Field do a great job at playing these very simple, but indestructibly sturdy Tuckers. Their two children live with them as well Scott's ancient grandmother Beulah Bondi, made up to way beyond her years even then. J. Carrol Naish has a nice part as a bitter neighbor who resents the fact that Scott might just make a go of it on land that cost him a couple of family members. Former silent star Estelle Taylor plays Naish's daughter and old time vaudevillian Jack Norworth has a small role as the local physician. Norworth's part is involved with Scott and Field's son coming down with pellagra, common among the poor people of the south who did not get a decent diet. Fresh milk every day went a long way and that's the reason that schools started giving out milk to the children way back in the day and still do. Besides a nomination for Renoir, The Southerner also received Academy Award nominations for Best Music Scoring and Best Sound. Sad to say for Renoir his film did not get to take any Oscars back to France when he returned. The Southerner ought to be seen back to back with Places In The Heart which has black people very prominent in the cast and does not shy from racial issues. Still even with that major flaw The Southerner is a deserved film classic.

The Southerner (1945) This is such a deliberately sentimental, salt-of-the-earth story, filmed with intelligence but no particular innovation, it's hard to believe the same director made one of my favorite movies, "Rules of the Game," with all its energy and sophistication. Can it be even as relevant as it seems to want to be, six years after the depression ended, and everyone's attention on the war, the bomb, and the returning soldiers with no jobs? In fact, the more you watch it the more it seems like a parody--but to make a tongue-in-cheek movie about something this earthy would be a kind of slap at the soul of the country. So what's to be though, or said? It almost has the documentary feel of a Flaherty film (from twenty years earlier). The heartfelt and rather sympathetic tone is offset (for me) by the obvious types played out--the terribly good neighbors and the backwards mean ones, the struggling good wife and the struggling good husband (both smart and stubborn and beautiful). You can have your preferences, of course, but if I compare to "Grapes of Wrath," as one example, I see a whole different kind of movie making, from acting style to photographic intensity to a story with complexity as well as sentimental warmth. But let's look at the other hand. This is not a slick Hollywood film. It was produced (funded and controlled) by the director himself, and he was able to keep what I call a European feel to the filming, something more honest. And the themes may well come from the huge trauma of Renoir's own life, having escaped from Europe and made an anti-Nazi film but felt adrift. This is his first straight American film, and he may in fact not know his subject directly, but only through the FSA photographs, LIFE magazine stories, and the book that it was based on, a pop fiction bit of pulp fiction in its own way. Heartbreak, bad weather, and ever transcendent human compassion merge together in this well made but imperfect film, sometimes regarded as Renoir's best American effort. Take it on your terms.

A depressing film detailing a family's struggle against the elements of nature. The film marked a change of pace for the usual suave, devious Zachary Scott. The same year as this picture, he was absolutely memorable as Monty Berrigan, Joan Crawford's n'eer-do-well second husband in the fabulous "Mildred Pierce." I kept waiting for Scott to have a break out scene in this film but that never quite happened. A bar room brawl as shown in the film was silly at best. Betty Field does her best as his suffering wife, but is hampered by the unusually weak screenplay. Nonetheless, there is a standout performance by Beulah Bondi as Granny. I think that Irene Ryan tried to imitate her in a comic way years later in "The Beverly Hillbillies." Whoever did the makeup on Bondi deserved some sort of accolade. The young son is plagued with the "spring sickness" in the film. That's what seems to plague the entire film. That fabulous Blanche Yurka, so magnificent as Madame De Farge in 1935's "A Tale of Two Cities" briefly appears at Scott's mother. It's a shame to have seen this great American actress reduced to the part that she had. Obviously, under contract, she had to do it. Her brief appearance totally lacked the luster that she was so capable of. Imagine, her marrying Percy Kilbride (the old Pa Kettle in the film.) If the author wanted to write about a farmer's battle with nature, he should have read "Giants in the Earth." What a great book that was. J. Carrol Naish's part had the potential to be quite good but again it was under-written. This picture could have been far more exciting with better writing.

An odd, Grapes of Wrath sort of Depression feeling film. But filmed by Jean Renoir post WW2. Some of the shots and situations are deeply affecting and beautiful. But then there's the dreadful, cartoonish performance by Beulah Bondi. And then there are the wonderful performances by Zachary Scott, whom I had never valued before, and Betty Field. Historically interesting and certainly worth the time. Very Americana.

Based on all the historical evidence, Renoir was granted independence in the making of The Southerner and it shows in his direction and control of stylistics. The pastoral setting is explored with great depth of field, while characters are staged in depth through windows like in many of Renoir's French films (M. Lange, La Chienne). The story is the epitome of apropos - "if you're working for a big outfit, maybe you don't get rich but you still get your pay even if the crops is bad. But the little guy who is growing his own, if his crops is ruined, he's got nothing left". This warning given to Sam Tucker sets up the drama of the story while also commenting on the methods of producing the film itself. The mobile framing and long take pans accompanied by voice-over dialogue would be quite unconventional for a Hollywood audience and are much more in tune with the kind of documented eye of social cinema which Vigo promoted. As much as the stylistics are European and Renoirian in origin, the story is a corny slice of Americana - to live on the land you own, catching trophy catfish, grandma watching over things from her rocking chair. It speaks to America... even ironically lies to America. "Land needs rest like a man. That's why the Lord invented Sunday" is of course ridiculous given that Sunday was invented by the citizens of the French Republic. Renoir makes the most of the realism that can be achieved through exterior shooting on location and not on the studio sets. The house that is used literally sits on a crooked foundation creating impact on the viewer where skewed perspectives juxtapose with prospects of hopes and dreams. There is no class conflict in this film... the conflict plays out within the working class. Renoir falls back on some decoupage classique but frames a great fight sequence through it. The most unRenoir element of the film is the portrayal of the wife who supports 100% her husband and at no point creates even the slightest amount of stress of strife for him... she is in effect a cardboard cutout "woman folk". For all the massacring of Renoir's films in the cutting rooms, The Southerner could do with the removal of anachronistic misogynist traditional values in some of his Hollywood films. Renoir always believed in egalitarianism for women especially, so one can see that as much as The Southerner is considered "independent", Renoir was still bound by the puritanical values of the society to which his film would be distributed.

Southerner, The (1945) **** (out of 4) Jean Renoir's classic tale of a cotton picker (Zachary Scott) who moves his wife (Betty Field) and children to a run down farm in hopes that they can grow their own cotton and make for a better future. Their first year doesn't go as planned as the family must struggle with no food, illness, natural disasters and a mean spirited neighbor (J. Carrol Naish). This film has quite a few faults including being oversentimental and featuring a poorly written part of grandmother but I still loved nearly every minute of this film due in large part to the three stars. I'm not overly familiar with Scott or Field but they really impressed me with their performances here. Their parts aren't anything we haven't seen already in previous films but they still manage to make their characters seem real and fresh. Naish gives the best performance I've seen from him as the feisty neighbor who doesn't give the poor family a chance. Renoir's direction is right on the mark and for a foreigner, he captures the southern spirit quite well.

Beautifully shot, absorbing film about the close-knit Tucker clan - Sam (Zachary Scott), the handsome dad who loves being a farmer, Nona (Betty Field), a good wife and mother who always seems to look well-groomed in spite of her hard work, two really cute kids, and then there's ornery old Granny (Beulah Bondi), she of the sharp tongue and stubborn will. In a gorgeously photographed scene where they are working for hire in the bright, sunlit fields picking cotton - the couple watches as their Uncle dies in the fields saying in his last breath "Grow your own crops", and they decide to do just that. Soon they have rented a property where they can raise cotton and be their own masters, so to speak - well, the house turns out to be nothing but a broken-down, ramshackle shack, the whole place needs loads and loads of work - but one good thing" it has "good earth". Troubles ensue - trouble with the neighbors, trouble getting food, sickness troubles, weather troubles, oh brother! Well, this is an excellent, heartfelt, and well photographed film done in an unusual, distinctive style. The actors who play the Tucker family do a good job in making this actually seem like a real family and make you want to root for them - but it is Beulah Bondi as cantankerous Granny who really steals this film for me - I really enjoyed her scenes and thought they added a little spice to this! The hardships this clan has to go through can be hard to watch sometimes, but the story is involving and the film is quite memorable.

An employee named Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott)frequently working for others is hired some land and he decides along with his family, -his wife (Betty Field), granny (Beulah Bondi)and two sons - attempt farming for themselves. The family finds hardships on their way and they'll have to fight against the elements,ills, poorness, distresses and a selfish neighbor (J. Carroll Naish) living with his daughter (Nash) and niece (Norman Lloyd) . This is a rural drama about a survival fight amid all disgraces and terrible elements. It's a naturalistic drama splendidly played and magnificently staged. From the tale 'Hold Autumn in your hand' by George Sessions Perry and writing by William Faulkner though he appears uncredited. It's proceeded in similar style to ¨Grapes of wrath¨ by John Ford based on John Steinbeck novel . First rate performances by all star cast. Special mention to Belulah Bondi as sympathetic and and grumpy granny. And Norman Lloyd as roguish nephew, he's a veteran player still acting , who joined the original company of Orson Welles-John Houseman Mercury Theatre and after that he was hired to Hollywood to play as secondary actor in Alfred Hitchcock movie and other ones and made him an associate producer. Neo-realist and evocative cinematography by Lucien Andriot. Sensible and imaginative musical score by Werner Janssen. The flick is excellently directed by Jean Renoir. He said about 'The Southerner' gave him more pleasure than any of his other Hollywood work. Renoir was voted the 12th greatest director of all time . Furthermore, Orson Welles frequently cited him as the greatest movie director of all time. He was son of the famous impressionist painter Auguste Renoir. After his French classics (Rules of game 1939, Human beast 38, La Marseillase 36, A day in the country 36, Boudu saved from drowning 32), he was brought to USA by American producers, directing awesome films in Hollywood (Woman on the beach 1947 , The diary of a chambermaid 46, The Southerner , The land is mine 43, Swamp water 1941). Later on, he returned to France , going on film-making classic movies (Elusive corporal 1962, Picnic on the grass 59, Testament of Dr Cordelier 59, Golden coach 52, The river 1951). Rating : Better than average, well worth watching.