The Southerner
Recently Restored
With Zachary Scott, Betty Field, J. Carrol Naish.
US, 1945, 35mm, black & white, 92 min.
Print source: UCLA
Almost universally hailed as the zenith of Jean Renoir’s five films in Hollywood, The Southerner was one of Aldrich’s first jobs as assistant director, and he gleaned from Renoir the profound power of physical location. The film is an impressionistic ode to the landscape of the American South, taking as its subject a poor family attempting, over the course of a year, to turn a scraggly crop of land into a bountiful farm. Driven less by conflict than by the changing seasons, the film’s narrative is nonetheless filled with strife, from the problems caused by the family’s territorial neighbors to those inevitably produced by the vagaries of the Texas climate. Successfully carrying over the mode of poetic realism that he honed in France, Renoir frames everything from a loose, casual distance, creating democratic juxtapositions of man and nature so as to stress the dependence of the former on the latter. But even when misery endures, it is resilience that prevails—a reality etched beautifully across the faces of Zachary Scott, Betty Field and Beulah Bondi, the last of whom memorably stands her ground as dark clouds tower over her in the frame, an image of humanity refusing to be conquered by circumstance.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
