The Southerner

Now Playing

1h 31m

Drama

List

93%

Tomatometer

14 Reviews

79%

Audience Score

500+ Ratings

In this rural drama, Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) is a Texan cotton picker who aspires to run his own farm and create a better life for his family, which includes two kids and the irritable Granny Tucker (Beulah Bondi). Aided by his beautiful wife, Nona (Betty Field), Tucker begins to work a neglected plot of land, but numerous difficulties arise, including bad weather and conflicts with jealous neighbors, making it hard for the Tuckers to get ahead.

Read More

Read Less

Now in Theaters

Now Playing

Buy Tickets

In Theaters

Fandango at Home

Prime Video

Rent The Southerner on Fandango at Home, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

Wolcott Gibbs

New Yorker

While the picture owes its basic design to Mr. Caldwell's play, the forces arrayed against its hero are not an exhausted soil or the irresistible invasion of money and machinery or even hereditary debility. It is much simpler and more exciting than that.

Oct 16, 2021

Full Review

Variety

It may be trenchant realism, but these are times when there is a greater need. Escapism is the word.

May 8, 2007

Full Review

Derek Adams

Time Out

Renoir's most successful American film, loose, free-flowing, honest.

Jun 24, 2006

Full Review

Roger Moore

Movie Nation

This is Renoir as cultural anthropologist, observing and dissecting and appreciating, with every painterly-composed scene.

Rated: 3.5/4

Aug 8, 2020

Full Review

Yasser Medina

Cinefilia

I see solid realism in this Renoir film, the third filmed during his American term, very much in the style of Ford's 'The Grapes of Wrath'. [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: 7/10

Jul 19, 2020

Full Review

Dennis Schwartz

Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

The land is pictured as being so real that you can almost taste it.

Rated: A-

Feb 20, 2007

Full Review

Read all reviews

Isaiah Y

A profound story of America greatly directed by a Frenchman, Jean Renoir

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

12/27/20

Full Review

Audience Member

A gripping film about how hard life was before, and about how little it took to overthrow a person's dreams

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/14/23

Full Review

paul d

This is a deeply realistic film about the lives of poor farmers struggling to survive. It also has a lyrical, poetic and deeply humane quality about it. The story of ordinary people struggling, often losing, yet remarkably resilient and optimistic, was billed at the time as 'a story of America', which fits perfectly. To capture the feeling of this film, think of a quieter version of a Frank Capra film, with lots of elements from The Grapes of Wrath. A beautiful film. The one off note in the film for me was Beulah Bondi's portrayal of the grandmother, who seemed to be the result of one-dimensional over-acting. But if it pleased Jean Renoir, who am I to complain?

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

If you can get past the horrible grandmother, this is a beautiful and great film. Why Renoir had Bondi perform in this cartoonish way almost ruins the film. Stay with it though. Its gritty, real, touching and brilliantly acted (even if Scott is too polished to come off as a dirt farmer). Betty Field shines.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

05/07/20

Full Review

Audience Member

Effective and all-too-real. The plight of the rural, uneducated southern white was a major problem, but filmmakers never addressed the bigger injustice: the plight of the totally disenfranchised,poverty-stricken black people who had no way to succeed in the 1940s.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/16/23

Full Review

Audience Member

One of a handful of films from Jean Renoir's American Period (roughly 1941 to 1947) that saw him tackle American themes but never straying too far from his interests in class and economic justice (that were most prominent in his greatest film, The Rules of the Game, 1939, and even La Grande Illusion, 1937). Here, Zachary Scott plays a cotton picker with a young family who decides to strike out on his own as a sharecropper (renting some of his former boss's land and including a share of the crop as payment). His wife, Betty Field, enthusiastically throws herself into fixing up the farm and sowing the field. His grandmother, Beulah Bondi, complains endlessly but is sweet deep down. Renoir manages to lend some human feeling to the proceedings and the relationships among the family and between Scott and his mean-spirited neighbour (J. Carroll Naish) seem authentic enough. It's a tough life but Scott and his family tackle it in a good humoured way (most of the time). In some ways, this is almost a neo-realist view of the (poor white) South, though I reckon things would have been even harder for some.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/04/23

Full Review

Read all reviews

Post a rating

Jean Renoir

Director

Zachary Scott

Sam Tucker

Betty Field

Nona Tucker

Beulah Bondi

Granny Tucker

J. Carrol Naish

Devers

Norman Lloyd

Finlay

Show Less Cast & Crew

Show More Cast & Crew

94%

90%

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

88%

90%

Mildred Pierce

77%

79%

Since You Went Away

97%

93%

The Best Years of Our Lives

57%

80%

Mr. Skeffington

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

View more photos

Synopsis

In this rural drama, Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) is a Texan cotton picker who aspires to run his own farm and create a better life for his family, which includes two kids and the irritable Granny Tucker (Beulah Bondi). Aided by his beautiful wife, Nona (Betty Field), Tucker begins to work a neglected plot of land, but numerous difficulties arise, including bad weather and conflicts with jealous neighbors, making it hard for the Tuckers to get ahead.

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenwriter: George Sessions Perry, Hugo Butler, Jean Renoir
Distributor: United Artists
Production Co: Producing Artists
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 30, 1945, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 11, 2016
Runtime: 1h 31m
Sound Mix: Mono

Most Popular at Home Now