Brown has truly created for M-G-M a triumphantly honest, adult film. Charles Kemper is porcine and brutal as the stubborn leader of the mob, Porter Hall is stark as his old father and Will Geer plays the sheriff manfully.The crowds and flavor of this picture are as Southern as side-meat and greens. Likewise, Elizabeth Patterson is a moving symbol of Southern delicacy and strength as the elderly, insignificant lady who coolly defies a lynch mob. as the youngster who first inspires a defense of the innocent man. Hernandez displays in his carriage, his manner and expression, with never a flinch in his great self-command, is the bulwark of all the deep compassion and ironic comment in this film.Excellent, too, are David Brian as the lawyer who involves him-self and Claude Jarman Jr. The stanch and magnificent integrity that Mr. Brown has also accomplished some real creative art, especially with Juano Hernandez, who plays the condemned Negro.
And the shocking explosion of tinny music from loudspeakers in the crowded square when the mob is gathering for the lynching is as vivid as the vulgar scene itself.With his cast, Mr.
There is a virtue in the realism of sound to which this remarkable picture will stand as a monument.
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The sounds, which are full of minor drama, are intrinsic to the action and the place.The effect in such eerie moments as the opening of the grave or the passage of whispered conversation between the boy and the Negro in the jail cannot be expressed in mere language. Most conspicuously, the director has shunned "mood music" throughout his films. He has placed his principal characters in stunning relation to crowds, and he has searched their expressive faces in striking close-ups for key effects. Faulkner's book-he has photographed most of his picture right there in that genuine locale with a sharpness of realistic detail that has staggering fidelity. Taking his cast and his cameras down to Oxford, Miss., itself-the town frankly acknowledged as the "Jefferson" of Mr. It is a drama of fateful decisions by a young lawyer in the town, a drama of the quiet determination of an old lady who believes in doing "right." And particularly, it is the drama of a proud, noble, arrogant Negro man who would rather be lynched in fiery torture than surrender his stolid dignity.If these sound like large illuminations to be accomplished upon the screen in the course of a ninety-minute picture that is also action-crammed, you may find the attesting explanation in Mr. It is a drama of the torturing tensions within a 16-year-old white boy who hates, yet admires, the doughty Negro whose innocent life is at stake. And it is also, strictly on the surface, a story of shrewd detective work by a young Southern lawyer and a Sheriff in tracing a callous murderer.But, essentially, this is a drama of the merciless wrench and strain of attitudes and emotions in a handful of people in a Southern town who react to the terrible dilemma that the crisis of the Negro presents. On the surface, it is a story of a desperate and courageous attempt to save an innocent Negro from lynching at the hands of a mob-a story of how three people, an old lady and two frightened boys, open a grave at midnight and find the evidence that helps to save the man. Brown has put upon the screen is as solemn and spooky a mystery as you'll ever want to see, powerfully pieced together out of incidents of the most electric sort.
As a matter of fact, the deeper meanings might be utterly missed by some who should still find this film a creeping "thriller" that will turn them, temporarily, to stone.And this is because the story Ben Maddow has expertly derived from Mr. And without one moment's hesitation, this corner, still shaking, proclaims that it is probably this year's pre-eminent picture and one of the great cinema dramas of our times.For here, at last, is a picture that slashes right down to the core of the complex of racial resentments and social divisions in the South-which cosmically mocks the hollow pretense of "white supremacy"-and does it in terms of visual action and realistic drama at its best. Under the title of the novel, it opened at the Mayfair yesterday. Out of the mordant material of William Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust," which told a savage story of an averted lynching in a sleepy Southern town, Producer-Director Clarence Brown has made a brilliant stirring film.
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