kw-93351
I had never heard of this movie but love Duvall so recorded it on TCM. I was riveted for the entire movie. The physical aching loneliness of both main characters is something I have never seen or felt from any other movie. It was a tragic but beautiful story. This movie will never leave me. The beautiful scenes between Duvall and the boy showed what pure love really is. I will now read the short story.
BasicLogic
Suppose this boy stayed with Fentry and grew up in his cotton farm, lived a simple and true life like Fentry himself and Fentry's father, the kid would have grown up a decent person and helped Fentry and later inherited the farm. But the fate didn't turn out like this, the bloodline and legal right enforced Fentry to give up the kid to a bunch of low lives of the Thorpe family, and later changed the boy to a worse and bad person, a rascal and a thief, then died from gun shot from a girl's father, when he tried to lure the daughter to elope with him.What a sad story. Fate is really a bitch that she never gives a darn to we folks.The only thing that I didn't quite get it is when the young boy was young, he was a bleach blond, yet when later showed when he was killed, his hair was dark brown or even in black. Could a blond kid when he grew up, his hairs would change into complete dark brown or even black? If the answer is no, then, the director and the producer(s) of this film did a careless job, making a film with one bad flaw.Anyway, Faulkner's stories are always like this dark and hopeless with lot of dirt poor illiterate folks in the deep South. I was told until today, such situation never changed, folks over there are still poor beyond imagination. Is America a really rich and developed country? I doubt it.
whpratt1
This is a very down to earth film story written by William Faulkner concerning a cotton farmer named Jackson Fentry, (Robert Duvall) who lives in the South and he is a poor person but also works as a watchman over a saw mill during the Winter. One day Jackson goes outside and hears the sound of a person in distress and discovers a woman, Sarah Eubanks, (Olga Belin) who is pregnant and he decides to help her and he takes good care of her. As the picture moves on the story becomes quite interesting and you will never be able to figure out just how this great film ends. The pace of this film is very slow and the actor Robert Duvall creates a great Southern accent and speaks his lines with a real Southern drawl along with a great actress, Olga Belin. Enjoy.
jdkraus
Based on a William Faulkner story, this movie has the dark, gloomy, but realistic look of his work. The art direction, lighting, and costume design shows that this is a low-budget film, but it doesn't make it corny. In fact, this adds much to the authenticity of what the South was like in the late 1800s. In addition, the film is in black and white; this helps make the depressive mood of the story.Like much of Faulkner's writing, the film is done in flashback form. It opens with a murder of a young man and the trial of the man who committed the killing. It then goes back twenty years earlier to a poor, Southern farmer, Jackson Fentry.Robert Duvall is simply wonderful as Fentry, a man who is cut off from most of the world. His character is lonely but yet a naive and caring individual as he finds an ill pregnant woman (Olga Bellin) while working on a farm as a caretaker. He takes her in and cares for her. Everything seems normal for awhile, but then two tragedies happen they lead up to the present opening of the film. Everything is tied in together nicely, making a great, yet sad ending. It brings up the questions: Which is better for a child? Heredity or environment? This sounds like an excellent film that I would give a 10/10. But what made me give it a 7 was the pace. The movie was incredibly slow. This is no action, and I knew it wasn't one, but the dry, drawling, Southern monotones that the actor's spoke made it boring.
AD
