alr

Tender Mercies

Screening on Film
Directed by Bruce Beresford.
With Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley.
US, 1983, 35mm, color, 92 min.

The often overlooked Tender Mercies is a winning, low-key film about a country singer who finds the inspiration to put his life back together when he meets an attractive young widow and her little boy. It features a tour-de-force, Oscar-winning performance by Robert Duvall as Mac Sledge, but the film's true strength comes from Horton Foote's sensitively written screenplay (which also won an Oscar). Foote refused to approach this material as soap opera or drama: the movie unfolds quietly and simply, and the big emotional moments sneak up on the audience as effects are indirectly achieved. The film's theme song, "It Hurts to Face Reality," was both written and performed by Duvall.

Part of film series

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: Directors A–D

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada