Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Richie-67-485852 Good movie to make the point of hard work, luck, breaks, and how to never give-up. It all stresses to be grateful for what you do have. This is a raw non-negotiable movie meaning this happens and is happening all over the world. One wonders how billionaires can be numb to this. The people in this movie would have made good use with a warm coat, blanket and some food for the hard times. How much could that cost anyone? It is wise to tend to our own affairs but if we find ourselves doing well enough, lend an eye and an ear to your neighbors welfare. Remember no one got to where they are without the help of others. This could be......

JohnHowardReid Copyright 10 August 1945 by Loew-Hakim, Inc. Presented by Producing Artists, Inc. Released through United Artists. New York opening at the Globe: 25 August 1945. U.S. release: 18 May 1945 (sic). No fixed U.K. release. Australian release: 13 June 1946. 8,287 feet. 91 minutes. (Available on a very good VCI DVD).SYNOPSIS: Sick of working for others, a young farm-hand attempts to go it alone. He moves his family to a derelict shack on an idle farm, but his cotton crop is ruined by a flood.NOTES: Nominated for the following prestigious Hollywood awards: Directing, Jean Renoir (won by Billy Wilder for Lost Weekend); Music Scoring of a Drama or Comedy (won by Miklos Rozsa for Spellbound); Sound Recording, Jack Whitney and General Service Co. (won by Stephen Dunn for The Bells of Saint Mary's).The film did not make Bosley Crowther's New York Times Ten Best, but it did gain a place in his long supplementary list of "mentionables".Jean Renoir for The Southerner: Best Director of 1945 — National Board of Review.The Southerner placed number three on the National Board of Review's "Ten Best" (after The True Glory and Lost Weekend).COMMENT: Beautifully photographed in starkly realistic natural settings, this is an inspiring if somewhat downbeat account of share-cropping in the dusty south. Although they are still recognizably Hollywood types, Zachary Scott and Betty Field are convincing enough as the bedeviled farmers. However they do tend to leave the running to the support players, particularly J. Carrol Naish (who has one of his best roles ever as an embittered, mean- spirited neighbor); Norman Lloyd as a bizarrely vicious half-wit; Noreen Nash as a kindly if vamping sympathizer; silent star Estelle Taylor (making her first movie appearance since 1932) as an opportunistic bar-fly; Nestor Paiva as a thief-thug of a barman; and of course Percy Kilbride in his element as the local storekeeper.I thought that Beulah Bondi, despite her faultless make-up, tended to over-do the selfishly ever-complaining nanny, and that the kids were just a little too squeakily clean, if otherwise perfectly natural.It can been seen that this is no dull quasi-documentary, but a richly characterized tapestry of Southern living. Packed with incident too. (Perhaps a little too over-weighted with thrills for complete realism, but I'm not complaining). The producers seem to have taken astute advantage of a natural disaster to film the flood scenes (good to see that no stock or newsreel footage at all has been used) which are fascinating yet terrifying to behold. Man-made incidents are not wanting either as Scott and Kemper systematically wreck Paiva's bar, and as Scott fights with the mercilessly bullying Naish. Superlatively yet unobtrusively crafted in all departments, The Southerner is an unusual yet highly compelling drama about "ordinary folks", with characters and settings well away from the usual Hollywood clichés.Indeed, so realistic is the background, it comes as something of a surprise to learn from Renoir's autobiography that the movie was actually photographed in a cotton field "not far from the small town of Madera, California, on the bank of the San Joaquin River. The situation was ideal. All that was needed was for Lourie to build a tumbledown shack and for the shooting to take place while the cotton was in flower."

DKosty123 This take on the struggles of poor Americans in the south trying to make a go of it when they move onto a run down farm has a lot of the family type of stuff as a novel on America's depression should. Most of the cast of this is not as well known as the Henry Fonda Joad family epic, but that is different in a significant way. The Joads are in the process of trying to escape the dust bowl. This family relocates to the run down farm at the beginning of the film and then the story goes through their day to day living torments.French Director Renoir does a fine job assembling a story that makes a lot of sense and shows farm life struggles in a different way. The most famous cast member to me is Percy Kilbride who would go on to be Pa Kettle. In this movie he is a store clerk he eventually gets married and has a big wedding party nearing the end of the film. Since his bride is not Ma Kettle that makes him a bigamist though there is no relation between the films. Even though this is not the most famous cast around, the performances here are very well acted, and the cast makes the story more believable. The ending after a major climate changing event, is a real life ending. For the folks who survive, life goes on regardless. It is a lesson that needs to be taught more to a generation right now who has the idea that Climate Change is the end of everything as we know it. Climate change is not an ending, it is a disaster that leads to a new beginning by those who survive. There is way too much gloom and doom and too many people getting rich peddling such nonsense.

disinterested_spectator A man who makes decent money picking crops in the summer and operating a bulldozer in the winter decides he wants to get his own farm. Three different people, in three different ways, tell him it is a mistake, that there is a good living and security in working for wages, but too much risk and privation in trying to start a farm. But he won't listen, because he just wants to own his own farm.Sure enough, everything goes wrong. He and his family almost freeze to death, almost starve, and a child almost dies of pellagra. He prays to God, asking him to tell him what to do. As far as I'm concerned, God has already tried to tell him what to do through those three people who warned him, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear.He sticks it out, and when the cotton is finally ready for harvest, it is completely ruined by a rain storm. Disgusted, he says he is through, and he is going to get a job at a factory. And just for a moment, I thought, "Good. He has finally come to his senses, and the movie is going to have a happy ending."Who am I kidding? No movie would ever end like that, even though it should. Instead, faith and optimism and pluck take over, and he is going to stick it out. Uplifting music. Credits. The End.