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The Southerner

Play trailer Poster for The Southerner Released Apr 30, 1945 1h 31m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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92% Tomatometer 13 Reviews 79% Popcornmeter 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.
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The Southerner

Critics Reviews

View All (13) Critics Reviews
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 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 Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Made while Frenchman Renoir was in Hollywood in exile, this rural portrait is a better film than Swamp Water, showing the helmer's penchant for meticulous attention to detail and lyrical realism, for which he received his only directing Oscar nomination Rated: A- Feb 8, 2007 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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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
The Southerner

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Movie Info

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
Producer
Robert Hakim, David L. Loew
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
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