UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

evanston_dad A marvelous slice of life film from, of all people, Jean Renoir, most known for movies set far away from America's heartland, like "The Rules of the Game" and "Grand Illusion."Zachary Scott and Betty Field deliver wonderful performances as a husband and wife who decide to make a go of farming their own plot of land rather than work for anyone. The movie is a chronicle of the hardships that face farmers, and a tribute to a certain kind of modest heroism that is willing to put up with all manner of strife to plow doggedly ahead. Neither the film nor Scott's performance make a martyr of the farmer, or even necessarily ask us to agree with him. Some people are cut out to be farmers and some aren't, the movie suggests, but it doesn't attach a value statement to that. Rather, it presents farmers as people who have to make a living just like anybody, and would rather do so by working the land than anything else.Some dramatic conflict is brought into the picture through a character played by J. Carroll Naish, a neighbor who makes trouble, but most of it comes from natural elements -- sickness, storms, flooding. It's a modest movie with modest ambitions that makes a big impact.Also featuring Beulah Bondi as an irascible grandmother, whose broad shtick wears thin fast and feels at odds with the rest of the movie."The Southerner" brought Renoir his only Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and it was also nominated in the categories of Best Dramatic or Comedy Score and Best Sound Recording, not especially meaningful recognition since the Scoring category had 21 nominees that year and the Sound Recording category 12.Grade: A

sol- Tired of working for others, a brash farmhand buys a farm of his own to operate with his wife, but things are not as easy as all that in this downbeat drama directed by Jean Renoir. As a Frenchman, Renoir is a curious choice to helm the project since the film is very much about the American Dream and the persistence of those trying to achieve it. There is a memorable scene early on in which the protagonist delights at catching a fish by hand in a pond at his farm, but any such initial joy soon turns to anguish as he realises just how unprepared and he and his wife are to raise their two children in farm-life conditions, oblivious to the need for fresh vegetables, milk, etc. Anguish is also generated by the not very kind or giving nature of their neighbours who, in reality, are just down to earth. Having fallen into the public domain over the years, 'The Southerner' is sometimes hard to watch given the grainy visuals that exist on most DVD prints, but the key to whether one takes to the film (or not) will mostly likely lie in how much one can sympathise with the protagonist. On one hand, he is a stubborn man who puts his kids' life in jeopardy since he refuses to listen to the advice of others. On the other hand, he is a dreamer who will stop at nothing in a quest to better his life. Certainly, audiences at the time liked the film quite a bit, but it is less certain what contemporary viewers will make of it.

weezeralfalfa One of only a few films I am aware of from the classic Hollywood era that is devoted to dramatizing the plight of poor white farmers in the southern US during the early 20th century. Others I can think of include: "Tobacco Road", "The Grapes of Wrath"(both directed by John Ford),"Sergeant York"(in part), and "The Yearling", none of which feature cotton growing in the humid South, as does this film, and all of which have a higher profile in recent times than this film, despite its several Oscar nominations. This is an engaging story, with conflicts over whether to try to make it as an independent farmer or to look for an easier and more predictable factory job. clearly, Pa Tucker prefers the country environment.We have mostly 3 generations of Tuckers living under the same leaky roof, including cantankerous Granny, who is often a pain, but can give some insights on the problems she experienced in her younger days as a farm wife as these relate to their present situation. As she related, near starvation and sickness have taken a heavy toll of her extended family over the years. One of the serious problems she is familiar with is 'spring sickness', which is hinted to be pellagra, a common vitamin (niacin) deficiency in the South of those times, caused by too much reliance on corn products, mostly corn meal mush, in their diet. Native Americans had long ago discovered how to prevent this problem by treating the corn with wood ashes, but European settlers never figured out that this treatment was important when their diet was too limited to corn products. The doctor rightly recommended that they include more vegetables and, in the short run, milk, in their diet. Presumably, the latter supplied needed calcium and additional protein, as one of the important symptoms of severe pellagra is skeletal demineralization. In the film, only the boy develops pellagra symptoms, but actually it was much more common among women and girls, as they tended to receive less varied nutrition than men. Back to the story: The Tuckers have rented unusually fertile bottom land to grow their cotton and kitchen garden crops. Unlike Cooper, in "Sergeant York", they don't have to deal with frequent rocks and steep hills. Unlike the Joads, in "The Grapes of Wrath", they don't have to deal with persistent drought, dust storms, and being displaced by mechanized corporate agriculture.Unlike the Baxters in "The Yearling", their crops aren't eaten by wildlife, although domestic stock do make a mess of their veggie garden at one point. But, they do learn that farming on rich bottom land encompases the life and career-threatening risk of occasional devastating floods and hurricanes. Meanwhile, some physical altercations while in town provide some comic relief. J. Carrol Naish played Devers, the Tucker's hard bitten, not often sympathetic, older neighbor.Naish was an excellent, sometimes charismatic, character actor, often playing Native Americans, Italians or Latinos, including Mexican Santa Anna in "The Last Command" and Sitting Bull in "Anne Get Your Gun", and later in "Sitting Bull". He played ethnics in several Fox and MGM musicals, where he served primarily for comic relief. I most remember him as the charmingly irreverent Italian Bayou fisherman in the musical drama "The Toast of New Orleans"Betty Field looks too apple pie fresh as a supposedly dirt poor ignorant southern farm wife. Besides, she was primarily raised in New England. Otherwise, she is fine as the leading lady. Zachary Scott, a native Texan, comes across as more believable in his role. Beulah Bondi, as granny, came across as the most authentic of the Tuckers. She apparently played a rather similar role in the film "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine". Unfortunately, she lost out in her most coveted role, as Ma Joad, in "The Grapes of Wrath". Thus, her role in the present film somewhat makes up for that lost opportunity. With all their problems, the Tuckers come across as spunky and optimistic in their precarious situation, quite different from the decadent downtrodden Lesters in "Tobacco Road", also in a vary precarious financial situation.

jacegaffney The movies (the old movies, that is) are a wondrous thing. You can be convinced of a fixed opinion about a film and then, poof! just like that, your mind is suddenly changed. This happened to me the other night when re-visiting Jean Renoir's 1945 THE SOUTHERNER on Turner Classics Movies. Truthfully, I never liked this highly acclaimed picture and have always held that Renoir's enforced exile to Hollywood after his greatest work, LA REGLE DU JEU, flopped in France in 1939, was, on balance, a disaster; now after seeing THE SOUTHERNER again I think I might have been over these many years a tad too harsh.At the very least, THE SOUTHERNER need be commended for what it is not. It is not THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Beulah Bondi, God preserve us, is not Jane Darwell (As a matter of fact, her cussedly grandmother is a glorious antidote to Darwell's revered stereotype.) Zachary Scott is, surprisingly, more credibly human than and (predictably) less saintly than Hank Fonda. Renoir's mise-en-scene looks like John Ford's in its simplicity but is without Pappy's characteristically annoying cliché visual embellishments. An added plus is Betty Field's beauty as Scott's resilient wife.THE SOUTHERNER is a significant film even if it isn't a great or important one for it might be with this independently produced picture by one of the notorious Hakim brothers that Renoir's interests shifted almost entirely away from character and psychology and toward a more exclusive focus on the effects of environment on human perspective and on the way time shapes the soul through the change of seasons. This philosophical take was expanded to include the acceptance of death when he went to India six years later to film Rumer Godden's autobiographical novel, THE RIVER. Thus, the shift to something religious and quasi- Eastern in outlook probably first took effect for keeps in Renoir's work with THE SOUTHERNER.I'll always prefer the more dramatically eventful, cosmopolitan Renoir of France and the thirties over the more innocent, meditative vagabond that came afterward but I am now willing to admit that the great challenge of his work as a whole is that he is never more sophisticated than when he is being most simple and never more simple than when he is at his most sophisticated.Was this review helpful to you?