Show Boat

The musical Show Boat has often been held up as the first modern American musical, in part because of its focus on a social issue: racism. The one time I saw the stage play, it struck me as long and static. By the end of the first act, Joe has finished singing "Old Man River," by far the strongest moment of the show, and Julie LaVerne has been evicted from the show boat with her lover after it is revealed she is half black. Then the musical drags on for another long act. Once Julie LaVerne leaves, the stage play (as I remember it) lacks much tension or dramatic excitement and instead becomes a kind of pageant play about the private and public life of Magnolia Hawks. The emphasis is cyclical—people are young and romantic, they have ambitions and love affairs, they grow old and disappointed, and their children enter into the same cycles on their own. The stage play did not strike me as particularly cheerful.

There are three film versions of Show Boat, one made in 1929, another in 1936, and the third in 1951. In the 1951 version, the garish Technicolor hues are unnaturally bright and bizarre. Although the film's focus in its first 40 minutes on miscegenation may be a sign of what passed in 1951 for a social conscience, this is hardly the main focus. Once Julie leaves, she is largely forgotten until she appears briefly later in the film in Chicago and then again in Natchez. Julie is a version of what used to be termed in American literary studies the tragic mulatto—a character whose mixed racial heritage becomes a source of tragedy and suffering in a society that cannot tolerate racial mixtures. In the film, the people on the show boat are apparently accepting of Julie, but when a spurned lover betrays her to the local sheriff, he enforces the local laws against love between the races. Although the cast and crew on the show boat protest, the sheriff is determined to enforce the law, and she leaves. Is Julie's situation tragic because of society's racism or because she is half black? Is society's racism held up as worse than the fact that poor Julie is part black, and therefore (in the view of the film) inferior--in which case the film itself is racist? This is one of the fundamental issues in stories concerned with racial mixed characters who come to bad ends. The play shows its inability or unwillingness to confront this question by simply dropping it. The focus then falls squarely on Magnolia (Kathryn Grayson) and her romance with the river gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel). The film then turns into a romance about show business and disappointment in love. The film also significantly changes the latter half of the play.

Julie LaVerne's character, played by Ave Gardner, possesses certain coded characteristics that are linked to African American stereotypes. She is passionate, she becomes an alcoholic, is involved in a series of love affairs, and when we see her towards the end of the film she is haggard and dissolute. She is the only woman in the film who in any sense seems sensuous, while the other young white women are prim, proper, and antiseptic. Julie also carries out a sacrificial function by giving up her role in a stage review when she learns that Magnolia is trying out for the role--that is, the black character sacrifices herself for a white character. Her sacrifice is also an act of self-destruction. Late in the play, she plays a key role again in bringing Ravenal and Magnolia back together. Once she departs from the main focus of the film, she fulfills an essentially subservient role. Therefore although the film may portray racism as regrettable, it also seems to portray Julie's partial blackness as less than desirable itself.

Early in the film, as the show boat approaches the riverbank for the first time, we see several scenes of African Americans working happily in the fields and lolling in a carefree manner around the decrepit, broken-down shacks in which they live. These early scenes do not suggest that the film takes an especially enlightened view of issues of race.

Although the film illuminates the racism of the society it portrays, it does not suggest a possibility for change. Instead it expresses a fatalistic sense of social determinism—as if racism, bias, the victimization of one group of people by another, are inevitable, inescapable conditions of life. The most powerful expression of this idea in the play and film comes in the song "Old Man River." Whatever one may think of the play or the film, or even the message of the song itself, "Old Man River" is powerful and moving. William Warfield as the African American stevedore Joe sings beautifully. Essentially "Old Man River" is a black man's lament about the sorry condition of human existence. It complains about hard work ("tote dat barge, lift dat bale"), about victimization by a society and a set of laws over which one has no power ("get a little drunk and you land in jail"), and the mortal, limited nature of human existence in general ("tired of living and scared of dyin'"). The ballad is the play's way of explaining away the sorry circumstances of Julie LaVerne's expulsion from the river boat—racism is just the nature of life, the film and the song imply, you have to accept it. Neither the film nor the play offers any alternative explanation. The song is an expression of determinism, pessimism, of the notion that these moments of oppression must happen and there is no changing them.

Both the play and film explore a parallel circumstance to racism--the victimization of women by the men they fall in love with and marry. Julie has a series of increasingly unhappy love affairs. Magnolia marries a riverboat gambler whose luck goes bad and who abandons her. Again the film suggests this is the condition of life. There's no changing it.

I found the central portion of the film, which focuses on Magnolia's marriage to Ravenal, tedious and predictable, like the play. The 1951 version of Show Boat offers a set of final scenes that are true tear jerkers. As sentimental and hackneyed as they were, they certainly had me reaching for the tissues. Ravenal meets Julie on a riverboat. She attacks him for her abandonment of the pregnant Magnolia, and he protests that he did not know Magnolia was pregnant. From Julie, Ravenal learns that Magnolia and their child are on the show boat in Natchez, where the riverboat on which he is travelling is about to dock. He finds his child playing with a doll, pretending that it is her father. He suggests that they pretend he is her father, and he sits her on his knee.

From a 2008 perspective this is a creepy scene—a little girl approached by a man she does not know who offers to play with her and then sits her on his knee. The film is wholly impervious to these resonances that are apparent to us only because in 2008 we are so jaded. Then Magnolia finds her daughter with the husband who abandoned her. After twenty seconds of gazing at each other, Magnolia and Ravenal embrace and reunite. Everything ends in happiness.

Glory

Films that portray history, in my opinion, have an obligation to be accurate, whatever viewpoint towards history they may take. Although Glory (1989) deviates in many details from the facts, it is in general an accurate account of the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. One might argue that from an ideological standpoint accuracy is less important than political content. Glory celebrates what for many may have been a forgotten but important episode from the Civil War.

Glory is not really a film about the south. It is a film that occurs both in the north and the south, and it certainly has pertinence to the south, but it is more concerned with national issues of history, race, and the struggle for freedom and equality. The racism portrayed in the film is mostly that of Northern soldiers and officers. Col. Robert Gould Shaw believes the men in his regiment can be as successful at soldiering as white soldiers. He meets a number of officers who do not share his opinion. A quartermaster refuses to supply shoes for the men because he regards them as soldiers who will do manual labor and never go into battle—therefore they don't need shoes as badly as men who are likely to see battle. Another officer encourages his black platoon to pillage and burn Darien, Georgia. When one of the soldier strikes a white women, the white commanding officer shoots the soldier. The film emphasizes that most of Shaw's fellow officers believe that training black soldiers for battle is folly.

Glory is about free African Americans and former slaves fighting for self-worth, dignity, and freedom. They want to prove their worth as soldiers, and therefore as human beings, and they are willing to die to do so. In the film, Colonel Shaw volunteers his regiment to lead the charge against Fort Wagner in South Carolina. As they march towards the front lines, the white soldiers in other regiments cheer for them, acknowledging their bravery. Of course, all the principal characters in the regiment are killed in the brutal attack that follows. Historically, nearly half the regiment died or was wounded in the attack, which failed to take the fort. The heroism of the men, their willingness to die for one another as well as for the country they fought for, is the point.

When Shaw volunteers his regiment to lead the charge, their deaths are a foregone conclusion. What kind of favor is he doing for these soldiers he loves so well—to lead them to their deaths in a charge that accomplishes nothing? Such questions, I suppose, are not appropriate.

Robert Lowell's poem "For the Union Dead" extols the heroism and the memory of the 54^th regiment. At the end of the film as the credits roll close-up images of what appears to be the monument in Boston about which Lowell wrote his famous poem are highlighted.

One small galling deviation from fact: in the opening scene soldiers are preparing for the Battle of Antietam, which took place in September 1862. As soldiers ride down a road, we see dogwood trees in bloom. Dogwood trees bloom in the spring, of course.

This is an excellent war film. It never fails to move me. Matthew Broderick, not known when the film was made for his acting ability, is excellent as Colonel Shaw. Broderick's natural awkwardness and slightly mannered way of talking supports his portrayal of Shaw as a somewhat naïve but also fiercely idealistic and committed individual—committed both to the defense of his nation as well as to the soldiers of the 54^th Regiment.

Way Down South

In Way Down South (1939), directed by Bernard Vorhaus and written by African American actor Clarence Muse and writer Langston Hughes, we see an old Louisiana plantation that exemplifies all the romantic myths about the antebellum South: we see slaves working happily in the fields and around the plantation house. They sing and dance joyfully and gladly serve their white masters. In turn, their owners are kind and thoughtful to them. Despite the great expense, the plantation owner is planning to build new slave cabins, though he is warned of the expense by his financial advisor. His family prides itself on never having sold a slave. The plantation is a place of social and racial harmony. The white boy who is one of the central characters in the film has as best friends two slaves from the plantation.

When the old master Timothy Reid dies after being run over by a horse, however, things go wrong. His son is too young to run the plantation, so his father's financial advisor Martin Dill assumes control as executor, with assistance from foreman Charles Middleton. Dill immediately begins taking steps to bring efficiency to the plantation, but at the same time he appears to be draining money from the plantation for his own uses. He is not as kind to the slaves as their dead master was. The head house slave, Uncle Caton, played by Clarence Muse, explains that Dill "don't understand the South."

Dill decides to sell most of the slaves on the plantation, including Uncle Caton. Young Reid helps disguise Uncle Caton as an old woman and escapes with him to New Orleans, planning to buy him passage to the north on a riverboat. There is, of course, comedy in having a black man dress up in disguise as an elderly white women, although the film doesn't play this plot element for as much comedy as it might. There were historical incidents of slaves disguising themselves and escaping north. The most famous is that of William and Ellen Craft. Ellen, who was light-skinned, disguised herself as a white man, while her husband posed as her servant. They describe the incident in their narrative of their lives, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.

Before Dill is able to sell the slaves, young Reid convinces a besotted New Orleans judge than Dill is stealing money from the estate and that his plan to sell the slaves is contrary to what his father would have wished.

The two main settings for the film are the plantation and the inn in New Orleans to which Reid escapes with Uncle Caton.

The film illustrates the mythic Southern ideal of the kind and paternalistic plantation owner who keeps good care of his slaves and treats them as family—though clearly in the film the slaves are shown as relatively simple and in need of protection. The intrusion of outsiders (Southerners always liked to complain about the intrusion of outsiders) causes problems. The extent to which the Hughes/Muse screenplay added these elements to the screenplay is unclear—I could find no evidence in Arnold Rampersand's Hughes biography that changes were made to the script against the authors' objections--apparently Muse, Hughes, and the producer Sol Lesser agreed to the antebellum context of the film. Ampersand suggests Hughes saw the film as a compromise and hoped he wouldn't be criticized too harshly for it. (He did receive considerable criticism). Hughes and Muse clearly had much to do with the portrayal of the slaves and of the film's specific emphasis on slavery. Slavery itself is not shown as a particular horror in the film. More than anything else being sold away from the place they have lived for their entire lives is what they fear and dread. Dill's plan to sell the slaves is the dramatic center of the film.

African Americans actors and the slaves they portray are prominent in the film. The film's argument against slavery (or at least against the selling of slaves) is especially strong for its times. Yet the slaves are portrayed as stereotypical—often clownish and bug-eyed, singing and dancing and jubilating. No African American in the film breaks out of a stereotypical role. They love and speak kindly of their dead master and his son. Although Uncle Caton is accustomed to speaking his mind to his owner, even disagreeing with him, the film makes clear that this is permissible only because the dead owner permitted and encouraged it. When Uncle Caton speaks his mind to the executor, Dill immediately places him on the list of slaves to be sold.

Much of the entertainment value of the film centers on the singing of the slaves (the Hall Johnson Choir, a black musical group, provided many of the actors who played slaves in the film). The singing varied widely from what one would imagine to be traditional slave ballads to jazz-type music current in the 1930s, to popular ballads. Young Reid (Bobby Breen, a transient child star and singing sensation of the late 1930s) breaks into song on a number of occasions, often accompanied by the African Americans in the film. The film, of course, was conceived as a vehicle for displaying his singing talents.

It's difficult to make a case for the racial progressivism of this film. Although slaves are portrayed sympathetically, they are also shown as simple and subservient. Although young Reid helps Uncle Caton to escape when Dill decides to sell him, this hardly mitigates the rest of the film. There is no attack on slavery here—only on the mistreatment of slaves, on the practice of selling them away from the friends and families whom they have grown up with (whether the typical slave grew up with friends and family is a historical question I cannot answer). One might argue that showing slavery as an institution where slaves could be beaten, exploited, and sold down the river in itself is an attack, yet too often in the film slaves are shown behaving gratefully for their condition. Although the Hall Johnson Choir sings beautifully in portions of the film, they and other actors behave in shamelessly stereotypical ways. Uncle Caton behaves with dignity, yet he never acts independently, is always a servant, is always bowing to the white masters who love but also own him.

Crazy like a Fox

In Crazy like a Fox (2006) Nat Banks, 8th generation scion of a Virginia plantation family, faces the loss of his family home and estate. He's a quixotic and somewhat eccentric man who rides around his plantation declaiming Shakespeare (especially King Lear) and admiring his land and family heritage. He's deeply in debt, his home is on its third mortgage, and he's being forced to sell. The film is about how he resists giving up his home and quaintly and ineptly tries to get it back. Banks is played by Roger Rees, who puts his experience as a Shakespearean actor to good use in this film.

The film is a quiet comedy, usually not slapstick or burlesque. Nate has a wife and two children. His wife Amy (played by Mary McDonnell of Battlestar Galactica fame) is more down to earth than he is. She recognizes the pointlessness of trying to hold on to the house and land, and she presses her husband to sell. Though Nate is not a success as a farmer, and though he seems to have money and sunk more deeply into debt no matter what he tried to do, the film is entirely on his side. Land, family, and heritage trump everything.

There is something endearing about this awkward and amateurish film. Partly it is simply the awkwardness. The film exists in spite of itself, and one can only speculate as to who produced and underwrote it. The Virginia Film Office is listed in the credits, and the prominent use throughout the film of information about the pivotal role Virginia has played in the nation's history suggests the film may be something of a homegrown effort—how many times Nate happens to mention that George Washington was friends with his great grandfather several times removed I cannot count.

Certainly in its values the film is homegrown. There's little subtlety. Crazy like a Fox defines the qualities of Southern living as gentility, community, veneration of the past, and love of the land. The North and the rest of the world are corporate greed and mindless urbanism. The South is agriculture and tradition. The North is commerce, banks, lawyers, and real estate agents. Not surprisingly, a lawyer and a real estate agent--they're married--decide to buy Greenwood. Not surprisingly, the lawyer is named Will Sherman. He has no sympathy for the feckless Banks, and as soon as he and his wife succeed in talking Nate into selling the house (with the promise that he can continue to live on the property as the farm manager) they evict him. Their plan, ultimately, is to raze the 200-year-old house and subdivide the land for a high-class subdivision.

Although the Shermans give their word about allowing Banks to continue living at Greenwood, about not tearing down the house, the film makes a point of the fact that they give their word as a matter of honor—the promise is not written down and therefore has no legal force. To the Southern real estate agent and to Banks their word of honor is enough. To the Shermans it is nothing—as soon as the deed of sale is signed, they announce their intention to evict Banks. The point here is that Southerners are people of honor while Northerners are not. I'd guess that few if any business deals these days depend on a word of honor, rather than a signed and notarized contract.

Nate's reaction to what he regards as betrayal and deceit is extreme. He begins to behave as if he has lost his mind. He finds the Civil War sword that once belonged to his grandfather, puts on the Civil War uniform given to his grandfather by General Lee, and begins riding back and forth across his land, waving the sword, reciting Shakespeare and Chekov. Though his wife and children move into town, he remains at Greenwood, living in a cave on a river bank, biding his time and looking for a way to defeat the Shermans. There is a clear connection here between Nate and King Lear—the old King is betrayed by two of his daughters and loses his power as a result; he wanders mad on the moor. Nate is betrayed by corrupt Northerners and loses his land. One wonders whether this connection will lead to a tragic outcome for Nate, but the film subverts any tragic connotations with a soundtrack that suggests that Banks behavior is comic and clown like, that he is more akin to Shakespeare's Fool than Lear.

People like the Shermans certainly do exist, but in this film they're so stereotypically drawn, so shallow, that it's difficult to take them seriously—even though they have the power to raze the house and sell the land. They have a home in Palm Springs and spend much of their time there. When Mrs. Sherman talks to the servants of Greenwood (whom Nate treats like family) she addresses them while sitting in a chair, in a distant manner, gives orders, and dismisses them by ringing a bell. Will is bombastic and arrogant and willing to do whatever it takes to get his way. Mrs. Sherman often talks about how the house at Greenwood is beyond repair. Greenwood for the Shermans is nothing more or less than a financial investment. The film makes clear that tradition and the abstract, tenuous notion of "land" as anything other than a financial commodity mean nothing to him.

While the Shermans are away at Palm Springs, the black housekeeper Mary Johnson (Myrrh Cauthen) tells Nate he should move back into the house. She regards the house without question as Nate's house. She believes the Shermans are hoping the house will burn because they have removed the pennies from the fuse box that kept electricity flowing in the house. Nate gradually convinces his family to return to Greenwood. The idea here is that while the Shermans are away Nate will make sure that the house is properly maintained. Everyone gleefully acknowledges this fiction. Nate and Amy hold a Christmas party—the entire town seems to be there. They all understand that Nate is living illegally in the house, but they don't care—regardless of the fact that someone else owns the house, it belongs to Nate and his family.

If the Shermans represent the North, then how does this film construct the South? The South is embodied in Banks himself, the patriarch of his family estate. He loves his heritage and his land, which he and his ancestors have gradually had to sell off in parcels to pay debts. Nate talks frequently about the importance of land and of farming, but we see him do little more than admire his property. He rarely works it. Maybe he has employees who work the farm, but we see little of them. (He even suggests at one point that making money off the land isn't the point of owning it. He tells Sherman that he could make money by raising chickens, if he wanted to.) Around Nate are arrayed other Southerners, the townspeople of the small town nearby, the African Americans who work in his house and who are absolutely loyal to him, the white employees who work for him. Although she at first resists, his wife Amy soon comes over to his side. In this small Virginia community everyone agrees that Nate should keep his land and house regardless of the fact that he can't pay his debts. They ostentatiously decline to acknowledge the Shermans when they pass on the streets. A local restaurant refuses to serve the Shermans; the owner describes them as trash.

When Sherman seeks permission to divide Greenwood up into estates for a subdivision, the country calls a meeting and declines to give approval. In retaliation, Sherman hires a wrecking crew and begins to demolish the house. Nate rallies friends and families and they obstruct the wrecking crew. Nate has another party at the house attended by everyone in the area, including the judge whom Sherman approaches the next day in hopes of legal redress. The film suggests (or at least Will Sherman sees it this way) that everyone in the area is related and in cahoots. When the crowd gathers to support Nate in his resistance to the demolition of his home, his wife Amy suggests that they make a party of it: they go home and dress up in 19th-century garb and return to riding horses and sitting in carriages, as if the Civil War is being fought again.

Recognizing that they may become embroiled in a losing and long-term legal battle, the Shermans decide to sell the house and land and leave town. Nate and his family move back in, victorious. Their real estate agent tells them they can live there and take care of the place while he tries to sell it. The film ends. Some might consider the ending as less than satisfactory because although Nate is back on his land and in his house, they are still being sold out from under him. But perhaps the ending is supposed to imply that given enough time Nate and his friends may find a way to buy back the house.

Crazy like a Fox is like a pageant play. There is no real tension. One occasionally wonders whether Nate is truly going to lose his mind and run amuck or even whether he is going to be killed. But for the most part the characters go through their expected motions—the evil carpetbagger Shermans rapaciously planning to subdivide and sell the land; the good and virtuous Nate Banks and friends stalwartly refusing to surrender to the forces of capitalism and the North. It is as if all the film really wants to do is to make its point—that the values embodied in the South—as the film construes the South—are good and noble even though they are being devoured and reduced by the rest of the nation. The film's definition of the South is, of course, arbitrary and narrow, historically flawed, and politically retrograde. This is the South that the makers of the film want to believe in, not the South that actually exists. The film sees the South in terms of the noble landowners. Land is everything. Veneration of tradition and history matter above all else. If farmers don't make enough money to pay their debts, the fault isn't theirs but that of the corrupt modern system to which they are subject. Lower-class whites as well as African Americans respect the landowners and share their values. Southerners live by a code of honor, not of law—law for them is based on honor. The portrait of the South we have here is artificial and hollow and incomplete—even Margaret Mitchell and William Gilmore Simms gave fuller portraits. At least in their novels, written from a decidedly partisan Southern viewpoint, there was the sense of a three-dimensional society being portrayed. In Crazy like a Fox Nate Banks comes across mainly as a flat, shallow Don Quixote figure.

Crazy like a Fox takes itself seriously. It is earnest and well intentioned, even though it is clumsily made as a film and poorly conceived and executed as a narrative that seeks to make serious statements about the nation and its history. If the nation were dominated by men like Nate Banks, we'd all be in trouble.

Crazy like a Fox is reminiscent of the film Colonel Effingham's Raid (1946), based on the novel by Berry Fleming, in which a retired military officer leads the people of a small Georgia town in resistance against plans to tear down the county court house.

The Reaping

The Reaping (2007) is set south of Baton Rouge, supposedly in or near the swamps and bayous of Southern Louisiana. This is a Gothic film of the supernatural, and the rural Louisiana setting with swamp water and hanging moss and an isolated small town that no one has ever heard of named Haven evokes a spooky, mysterious setting. In fact, this story could be set anywhere—nothing in it is specific to Louisiana or the South. The supernatural trappings are generic—we could be in New England or Oregon.

The South in this film explains the willingness of the townspeople to believe that strange happenings are manifestations of demonic activity, and that a twelve-year-old girl is at their center. Haven is untouched by the outside world—the townspeople like their isolation. The first image we see when we arrive in the town is a religious sign. The main character Katherine (Hillary Swank) is the representative of enlightened reason, but she also has a gripe with God, whom she blames for killing her husband and daughter.

Katherine teaches at LSU and her specialty is debunking miracles—proving they have a rational explanation. Five years earlier she went to Africa as a newly ordained minister to do missionary work with her husband and five year old daughter. The husband and daughter were killed by African villagers who blamed them for a drought. In response, Katherine loses her faith. She works with an African American man, Ben (Idris Elba), who is deeply religious, primarily because he miraculously survived a gang shooting when he was younger. The interplay of faith vs. reason, of Katherine vs. Ben and the villagers, gives the film some interest, for a while. But you can predict where things will take us. Mainly this film is a hackneyed mess.

The local science teacher (David Morrissey) summons Katherine to Haven when strange events begin taking place: a boy dies mysteriously; cows become ill without explanation, two miles of the local river runs red with what appears to be blood. The townspeople believe there is a cult worshipping the devil out in the woods, and that the 12-year-old is responsible for all that is happening to them. Katherine believes a bacterial infection, or pollution, is to blame. One event leads to another, and it soon appears that the same ten plagues that besieged ancient Egypt are assaulting the town, that God is trying to send some kind of warning or message, that something portentous is about to occur. Katherine soon gives up on reason and is convinced over the phone by a priest she knew in Africa that she is God's angel appointed to resist a satanic plot. There are surprises and twists and turns in the plot, but you expect such twists and turns in this kind of film even if you don't know what they will be.

We have our obligatory scenes in a graveyard, in a crypt, in a mysterious locked room, in a dark and ominous basement which of course Katherine doesn't hesitate to explore. Ben is the film's one African-American character, and as such we know he must die—the only question is when.

I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," of the early Stephen King, of Nathanael Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. Mostly I was reminded that the film could not last forever.

Payday

Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville portrayed country music stars as largely cut off from their country roots. Nashville itself was shown as a modern city that only simulated at best the authentic country roots of its birth. Nashville was a satirical send-up of the American Bicentennial. It was more about America and popular culture than country music, which was a mere vehicle. Payday (1973) provides a portrait of country music that is simpler and more conventional. Yet the film is decidedly unromantic. Produced by Ralph Gleason, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, and with a cast and crew of virtual unknowns, the sole known presence in the film is Rip Torn, who portrays country music star Maury Dann.

Dann is a star either on the way up or the way down—which is not exactly clear. He tours nonstop with his band. They drive from gig to gig in a pair of Cadillacs. Maury quips, "You only go around once in life. You might as well go in a Cadillac." He's waiting for a big break, hoping for an appearance on the Johnny Cash Show, not counting on it. He's got to keep moving, keep performing, to stay alive and solvent. The film is structured around his travels from one point to another. He's always moving.

When the film opens he is playing a honky-tonk that brings in a box office of $600. We see members of Maury's band being paid $50 each for their efforts. This is part of the title's meaning: struggling to make ends meet, to make it to the next payday. But there are other meanings to the title. Maury earns a living by constant touring, never stopping to rest or get his bearings. While Nashville shows the glitz and glamour of the music industry, Payday shows the grueling routine and boredom. Only once in the film do we see Maury on stage. Rarely do we see him enjoying himself. Instead we follow him from one hotel to another, with stops along the way to visit his broken-down mother, his first wife and the three children whose ages and birthdays he cannot remember. Country music for Maury—life in general--is a constant grind.

Payday has a flat, documentary style. The cast seems composed largely of rank amateurs, though a few went on to modest television careers. Their Southern accents are often poor imitations of reality. Only Rip Torn gives the film any life. He seems to base Maury Dann on Merle Haggard, with a smidgen of Conway Twitty thrown in for good measure. He sings a passable imitation of Haggard, though it's parody too. Halfway through the film we notice that something is happening to Dann—things are piling up on him, closing and hemming him in. He constantly pops pills, often with shots of whiskey. When a young song writer he has hired complains of fatigue, Dann offers him a pill. When his mother complains that she doesn't have enough energy to get out of bed, he offers her a handful of pills.

Dann becomes increasingly abusive as the film moves forward. He mistreats and uses the people around him. He fires a band member who insists on buying his dog (Maury's mother is neglecting it). When a fan asks for autographs, he lures her into the backseat of his Cadillac. He tires of the girlfriend we see him with at the beginning of the film, and has sex with another girl in the backseat of the car where his girlfriend is sleeping. When she blows up at him, he orders his driver to pull the car to the side of the road and throws her out. He throws a wad of bills at her, drives off, then comes back and retrieves the bills, explaining "You haven't earned it."

Dann's decline accelerates when he gets into a fight with a man at a restaurant—the companion of the autograph-seeking girl whom he lured into the Cadillac. They go out into the parking lot. The man pulls a knife, but Dann manages to deflect the blade, fatally wounding the man, who dies in front of him. Instead of taking responsibility for this accident, Dann says he doesn't have time to deal with the police and instead orders his manager to "take care of it." His manager pays off the restaurant manager and convinces Dann's driver, Chicago, to "stand in" for him—that is, to tell the police that it was he, not Dann, who was in the fight. Dann offers a job to the only other witness, a young and terrible singer and songwriter. This is a bribe, in essence, though the young man is too dimwitted to realize it. We suddenly become aware in a shocking way of the kind of man Dann has become—a man besotted with his own celebrity (or the hope of celebrity), relying on other people to get him out of trouble, to pay people off or to "stand in" for him. He consumes people—his girlfriends, his mother, the man on the pavement outside the restaurant.

A few scenes later, Dann finds himself back in his hotel room with two policemen, a district attorney, his manager, a promoter, and a songwriter. They all are making demands. He takes the songwriter and leaves the room, driving furiously out of the parking lot. They drive down a country road, sipping whiskey, and talking about what it was like for Dann to grow up on a farm. Dann says he hated farm life. They pass a cotton field, and Dann remembers how he hated to pick cotton. Then he suffers a heart attack and dies. The car runs off the road, coming to rest in a plowed field. The last glimpse of Dann is of his lifeless face, his eyes open, staring into nothing. The scene directly echoes the restaurant parking lot, where the man whom Dann accidentally killed lies dead, his eyes open and empty. This is the real payday towards which the entire film has moved.

It's clear that Maury Dann has talent. In a hotel room late at night, alone, he sings a few bars of a song that he presumably wrote. The song is beautiful and heartfelt. But he sings only a few bars and then moves on. His is a squandered talent and life. We see Dann in the context of the "country" roots that gave him his identity and his life. He goes bird hunting with friends in the countryside near his childhood home. He clearly enjoys himself. Yet he also enjoys his life as a singer, a life that has demanded a growing series of compromises and concessions, that draws him away from those country roots. It's possible to view Dann's decline as one created by the world in which he lives—the commercial music world that forces him to attend to his manager and give mindless interviews to disc jockeys and to worry about box office sales and album revenues. But the more convincing explanation for Maury is that as a man and an individual he's lost hope, he no longer believes he will get the big break, he rides the highways just to keep going, to avoid the conglomeration of debts, demands, sins, crimes, and failed responsibilities accumulating behind him.

Dann's payday is the day when all these burdens catch up with him in the field where his Cadillac comes to rest.

Dann's demise comes as the result of his desire for fame and celebrity, for his increasing immersion in the commercial side of the music industry. He's not in the industry to sing his songs or to share his feelings—he's in it for money, for fame. In the film's final scene, as he drives down the dirt road deep into the heart of the countryside, the countryside that presumably gave him his values, formed his identity, fueled his songs and his music, we're painfully aware—even before he dies—of how separated he is from those roots. In this sense Payday agrees with Nashville on the corrupting force of commercialism. One might compare Dann to Barbara Jean in Altman's film. However, there is a difference that makes Dann a more complex character than Barbara Jean. She's a true victim of the environment she lives in. She's emotionally fragile and apparently mentally ill—she's not aware of how she is being used. She knows only that she loves to sing and she relishes the attention an adoring audience can give. Dann is complicit in his downfall. His compromises and mistakes and self-indulgences are ones he chose for himself—including the pills and the booze that ultimately killed him.

Payday was filmed well before Elvis Presley ate and drugged himself to death. Yet it was also made in the wake of the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Gram Parsons, and others. The country music industry was well known for alcohol and drug abuse, for self-destructive behavior. Hank Williams' death in 1953 from drugs and alcohol seemed almost to set a pattern. Johnny Cash became notorious for his drug use in the 1960s. Self-destruction and country music—self-destruction and music as a cultural theme in general—are clearly a context in this film.

Smokey and the Bandit

When I first began teaching in my current position some 31 years ago, America's youth, or at least the youth of the American South, were entrenched in a country-western phase. Boys sported moustaches and wore wide brim Western hats and wide leather belts. Trans-Ams were the rage. Girls had big hair. Chewing tobacco, unfortunately, was in style. My wife and I attended a Doug Kershaw concert, and the "yee-haws" echoing back and forth across the coliseum were deafening. Partially responsible for this phase was the film Smokey and the Bandit (1977), starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields. My recollection, which admittedly might have become exaggerated over the years, is that the film played for at least a year in the town where we live. It was wildly popular.

Another cultural phenomenon from those years was Coors beer, manufactured in Colorado and not yet distributed east of the Mississippi River. Because of its unavailability in the eastern United States, Coors beer acquired a mythic reputation—manufactured from the pure clear waters of the Rocky Mountains, better tasting than any beer in the world, etc. People who traveled to Colorado would bring back cases of the beer for themselves and for friends. In Smokey and the Bandit, the Bandit is hired to transport four hundred crates of Coors back east. Supposedly such importation was illegal--at least in the film it was--but in reality such transporting of beer was entirely legal.

All of this is to suggest that in its day Smokey and the Bandit and its two lesser sequels were a cultural phenomenon in and of themselves, and part of a larger cultural phenomenon that had to do with the American South, the election of Jimmy Carter, the ascendancy into mythic realms of CB radios and truck drivers, and of course the career of Burt Reynolds, who during the 70s and 80s specialized in good ol' Southern boy roles in such films as Gator, White Lightning, The Longest Yard, W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings, Deliverance, and others.

Early on Smokey and the Bandit establishes the main character's profession as a "bandit," one that exists outside the normal boundaries of law and order. Although his real name is "Bo Darville," he is hardly ever referred to as anything other than "Bandit" or "the Bandit"—his CB handle. The use of bandit—as opposed to criminal, outlaw, or crook—suggests facility of movement, a tendency to feint and parry, to flirt with lawlessness as opposed to rebelling against it, and as opposed to outright hoodlumism. This is banditry in the sense of Robin Hood, in the sense of moonshiners who insisted on breaking the law and manufacturing their product simply because they felt compelled to do so by the fact of the law that demanded they should not. We can recall here the specific example of the film Thunder Road (1958), where resistance to law and order becomes a matter of principle for the bootlegging character Lucas Doolin played by Robert Mitcham.

In Smokey and the Bandit, banditry has given the Bandit legendary status. He is known across the southern regions of the nation, at least among those who drive trucks and listen to CB radios, for his exploits—for the most part these exploits go unexplained, but we can guess what they were by what happens in this film. Of course, as the film begins, it appears that the Bandit has either retired or been co-opted or both. He is appearing as a paid attraction at a stock car fair, and we first see him lolling in a hammock, apparently sleeping beneath the western-style hat that covers his face. The film implies that the Bandit has given up his wild days, but the prospect of driving 1800 miles in 22 hours, hauling 400 crates of Coors beer back from Texas, and earning $80,000 for his efforts lures him from his lethargy.

Regardless of the mild and benign connotations of banditry, a bandit is still a bandit, a renegade individual at odds with the law. What defines this Bandit, making him both the hero and the erstwhile moral center of the film, is what he opposes. One aspect of the opposition is the law that forbids importation of Coors Beer. In fact, such a law did not exist when the film was made, or at any time before or after, but in the film the law helps place the Bandit in the same league as other purveyors of illegal goods that the general public desires: moonshine, tax-free tobacco, marijuana, other drugs. Even though these substances may be forbidden and even dangerous, they make the public happy, and the Bandit stands up for public gratification. A more obvious aspect of the opposition is Smokey, Sheriff Buford T. Justice, played in the film by Jackie Gleason in an excessive and over-the-top example of flagrant overacting.

Although the Bandit is broadly portrayed by Bert Reynolds, he still seems an occupant of a real world. Justice, on the other hand, is a cartoon caricature on the same level as any number of characters from the Lil Abner comic strip, though less realistic. The ironically named Sheriff Justice is boorish, corrupt, racist, venal, vain, and wholly without scruples. His ineptness, along with that of others around him, especially his son, mitigates to an extent his numerous character flaws. Justice pursues the Bandit not because he is transporting illegal beer over the state border, or for reckless driving, but because the Bandit has picked up along the way the would-have-been bride of Justice's son. She has decided not to marry, and Justice intends not to allow her to get away with this affront to his honor. As the Bandit constantly outwits and outdrives Justice, the insult to his authority and character becomes all the more irksome, and Justice's resolve strengthens as a result.

Smokey and the Bandit operates within the Southern tradition of tall tales, ring-tailed roarers, and exaggerated humor. Old 19^th century Southern humor emanated from the margins separating the frontier from more civilized regions—or from the memory of those regions, since much old Southern humor was written well after the frontier had receded. In 1977 the frontier is long gone. Highways, country roads, and rural areas in general have taken on the role of the vanished frontier. Instead of the hypocritical parsons and repressed elderly widows who populate old Southern humor, Smokey offers the character of Smokey himself—Sheriff Buford T. Justice--a corrupt law enforcement official. Two cultural and historical backgrounds affected the conception of Sheriff Justice's character. In 1977 the United States was still weathering the shock of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Georgia's former governor Jimmy Carter won election to the White House in part by appealing to the national desire for recovery and moral rectitude in the wake of the scandal. Politics in general was tainted with a fresh stench of corruption, and although the stench did not emanate from any specific geographical region, it was easy enough to focus on the American South as a place where corruption in law enforcement and government was more than familiar. The South's 20^th century legacy of demagoguery and racist leaders helped encourage this tendency. The 1949 film All the King's Men focused on this very topic, and numerous films about the American South feature corrupt politicians and demagogues. In his novel The Mansion (1959) William Faulkner satirized Southern politicians in the character of Senator Clarence Snopes, a bombastic and compromised demagogue. Faulkner also named two characters in his novel As I Lay Dying (1931) for corrupt Mississippi politicians. Sheriff Justice is simply one in a long line of corrupt Southern politicos. The populist film drama Walking Tall (1973) works against type in its portrayal of a Tennessee sheriff who risks and ultimately loses his life in his effort to combat crime and corruption in a small Tennessee town. There the exception serves to confirm the rule in the linkage of corruption and the American South.

Smokey and the Bandit does not argue that all Southern policemen are corrupt. To the contrary. An Arkansas sheriff in the film is African American, highly competent, and more than capable of doing his job. Buford T. Justice wonders "what the world is coming to" when he encounters the black sheriff, and this racist questioning is one of the factors that distinguishes Justice from other good and capable Southern policeman. It is a particular kind of Southern sheriff at which the film takes aim.

At most, we see only small towns in Smokey. Much of the action takes place on the highway, on back country dirty roads, and in rural regions of the states through which the Bandit and Cledus drive. The big Southern or American city—such as Birmingham or Atlanta or Charlotte—is merely an implied potential in the film. We know that no one like the Bandit could drive like he drives in the big city. It is the presence of the rural regions—the Bandit's territory—that allow his existence to begin with. In the city he would be an anachronism, and he'd be arrested as well. Moreover, many of the people who live in the rural countryside are allied in values and basic beliefs with the Bandit—they idolize and mythologize the Bandit because he acts for their beliefs and values.

Smokey and the Bandit followed by nearly a decade another Southern film, Easy Rider. That film portrayed the South as a brutal place of racism and oppression. The South in that film is the obverse of the freedom the two bikers seek for themselves. Other films of the late 60s and 70s also gave expression to a revolt against authority. In those films authority was vested in the U. S. government, or in conventional and conservative aspects of American society—such as the Southern states—in which respect for authority resided. Smokey perpetuates this distrust for authority, but reconfigures it in a significant way—authority now resides not in just any faceless law enforcement official but in a corrupt policeman, Sheriff Buford T, Justice. The film's opposition to authority is not opposition to an unpopular war but instead is opposition to corrupt authority that can arbitrarily trammel on the rights of the individual, and against purported laws that forbid the importation of a particular brand of beer.

The film is at its least interesting when it focuses on Justice, who is too much of a buffoon. Frankly, the film is not very interesting when it focuses on the Bandit's developing interest in Carrie, the escaped bride of Justice's son. In 1977, Reynolds and Sallie Fields were a romantic item, but from the perspective of 2007, wherein Fields shills for osteoporosis medicine and Reynolds struggles to keep his hair piece on straight, the power of three-decade old gossip has diminished. The film is at its best when Reynolds and his sidekick Cledus Snow (Jerry Reed) joke around together, drive fast, and engage in carefully scripted one-liners.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) is often witty and outright funny. Its problem is that it relies on wide-ranging pop cultural references from the 1960s and 1970s that would mean little to the age group towards which the film is aimed. Walk Hard is a satirical history of popular music—rock, folk, country, pop—in America since the 1950s. It's a send-up of rock-and-roll biographies and of the very nature of a pop music career. Dewey Cox is a country singer who gets incredible mileage out of his greatest hit, the eponymous "Walk Hard," and he spends much of his career riding the wave of whatever musical trend has recently crested. He always seems a few strokes behind the wave. Dewey is not particular intelligent, he's a bumbling screw-up, he's always succumbing to one temptation or another, and his inept drift through life makes for an often entertaining if occasionally tedious film.

Dewey goes through numerous phases: Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash (he is loosely modeled on Johnny Cash), and others. There's a brief reference to Jim Morrison and another to Conway Twitty. In one longer episode Dewey goes to Tibet to meditate with the Beatles. The trouble is that the audience towards which this film is aimed—the under-25 audience—doesn't have a particularly good memory of the figures and the decades to which the film refers. How many people in this age group know much about the history of the Beatles or recognize the style of Roy Orbison? Not many. Further, the comedy in this film is not particularly sophisticated, and one wonders how the audience in the age group that would recognize the cultural references—by this I mainly mean an over-50s audience--would respond to it.

I enjoyed the film, especially the musical sequences, which John C. Reilly, who plays Dewey, sings very well. The Bob Dylan parody is hilarious. But the narrative is thin and sometimes it founders. The musical numbers that tend to trace the development of pop music in America are not always presented in historical order, so that confusion results if you try to trace events too closely. Walk Hard in specific gets a lot of mileage out of satirizing the biographical pictures about pop music legends Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. The specific model is the recent Johnny Cash film Walk the Line (2005). Walk Hard satirizes the attempt of Walk the Line to explain Johnny Cash through traumatic events involving his brother's death and his difficult relationship with his father. There are numerous parallels between Dewey Cox and Johnny Cash. Like Cash, Dewey Cox abuses drugs, is unhappily married to an unsympathetic first wife, ignores his children, and has affairs.(Dewey is outrageously indifferent to his family. He loses count of how many children he has (22), and when his oldest son shows up at his beach house one day and asks him to play catch, Dewey asks the boy what his name is. At one point he's in a reverse custody battle—one of his ex-wives is trying to force him to take custody of his children. When his first wife finds out he has married a second wife and reminds him that marriage to more than one person at a time is a crime, he asks whether the fact that he is famous excuses him.)

Ray (2004) also seemed to suggest that the death of a younger sibling had an impact on the singer Ray Charles' talent. Instead of blindness, Dewey Cox is afflicted with an inability to smell.

Walk the Line and Ray are not bad films. They're entertaining, they have merits, and their attempts to link the careers of their main characters to events early in their lives are at the least reasonable. This is not to say that good films can't be satirized, and Walk Hard effectively uncovers the clichés and hackneyed formulas that govern how we think and talk about the lives of famous people.

Walk Hard makes fun of the very notion of a celebrity career—a famous singer's rise from obscurity to early fame and then the long slow decline punctuated by occasional comebacks and appearances on television shows and in the scandal sheets. Walk Hard shows us a parody of the famous 1968 Elvis Presley comeback special. (The special was in fact a genuine triumph for Presley that for a time revitalized his career). We see Dewey in his own generic 1970s era television show similar to ones that featured singers such as Glen Campbell and Sonny and Cher (together and separately) and the Everly Brothers and many others. Such shows took formerly stellar talents (and some less than stellar) and diluted and homogenized and commodified them for middle-brow audiences—often with the full cooperation of the stars themselves—this explains Elvis Presley's film career.

Towards the end of the film as Dewey Cox grows older the satire becomes gentler and at times seems almost to disappear. In a final scene, after a two decades absence from performing, Cox appears on a tribute show and performs his final song—a full orchestra and choir back him up. It's an absurdly beatific moment. The song is about how after a profligate life of misbehavior and drugs and women he has discovered the importance of family and friends. It's a deliberately saccharine song, and the first time I watched the scene I missed the fact that the intent is indeed satirical. Although the song is genuinely terrible, everyone seems to love it. Coming to the end of his life with an redemptive understanding about family and friends, Cox completes the arc of celebrity, corruption, and salvation that we all want to impose on celebrity careers. The fact that he dies on stage three minutes after completing the song just drives the point home.

In the tribute show, Lyle Lovett, Jewel, and Jackson Brown appear to sing a version of "Walk Hard"—their careers are not exactly flourishing either—is this irony?

Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is not technically about the American South. It's really a film about the southwest and the middle-United States—the regions in which Bonnie and Clyde were active during the 1920s and early 1930s. But Bonnie and Clyde are a Southern tradition and heritage. I remember my grandmother, in her last days, rambling on about two young hoodlums in Texas who held up banks and shot people during the 1920s. it took me a while to realize that she was talking about Bonnie and Clyde. Though the actual province of the film may not be the deep South, it certainly feels Southern—the accents of the primary characters (not that authentic) and the Homer and Jethro soundtrack.

The new book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris discusses how screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman wrote the original screenplay with Francois Truffaut in mind, and how they even managed to interest Truffaut in the idea of directing a Bonnie and Clyde film. Truffaut seriously considered directing the film and made detailed notes on the screenplay. According to Harris, Truffaut significantly influenced the shape and style of the film. At the time, Truffaut's attention was mainly focused on Fahrenheit 451, which would be his first English-language film. He apparently discussed the Bonnie and Clyde screenplay with Jean Luc-Goddard, who also considered directing the film. Ultimately, the task fell to Arthur Penn, whom Truffaut admired. This information led me to look at and think more carefully about the film. I had not watched it since its original release in 1967. At the time the film had considerable shock value. For the time, it was violent and bloody, and it presented the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde in a relatively sympathetic context. Their deaths at the end of the film in a brutal hail of gunfire was incredibly graphic and shocking. Though that final scene still has its power, it no longer delivers the shock that it carried forty years ago. The realism of the film has suffered as well. There's an air of glamour surrounding the two main characters of the film. The film often shows photographs of the real Bonnie and Clyde, who were considerably less beautiful that the movie versions. The originals were sallow and hard in appearance. The film versions seem well fed, full of curves and smooth lines. They wear nice clothes, even before they start collecting money from robbing banks. It's difficult to think of a character as goofy as the Warren Beatty version of Clyde robbing banks and killing folks.

Bonnie and Clyde is not seamless, it suffers from certain logical flaws, and it is broadly drawn. It has more energy and force than skill.

The film attempts to portray the two outlaws as depression-era heroes. During one bank robbery, Clyde decides not to take the money of an old man because he is a farmer who needs it. Yet in other robberies he shoots people who are little better off than the old man.

Penn's outlaws are not rebelling against social injustice or poverty. They're rebelling against boredom. At least this is the case for Bonnie, who wants escape from the heat and emptiness of her bedroom, where we first see her lying naked at the beginning of the film. She also wants sexual adventure, and at first she thinks she has found it with Clyde. Their first bank robbery together is clearly a sexual thrill for her, though she soon discovers that Clyde is unwilling to respond to her advances. Clyde at first glance is not the kind of rebel Bonnie wants to be. He's an ex-convict, of course, recently released from prison, but he's not in revolt against much at all. He comes across as a dumb brute, at times, and it's only his unstoppable vigor and momentum that gets him through the robberies, which he carries off more by impulse than by plan.

It's not always clear what Bonnie and Clyde really want. Clyde at times seems willing to settle down into a traditional husband and wife relationship. Bonnie chafes at these moments, yet she also longs for her family and her mother—who knows very well where Bonnie's prospects are bound. Mostly the two don't know what they want. They just want to be themselves, and they don't want to give much thought or time to self-justification.

Contrasted against law enforcement officials in the film, especially the sheriff who devotes himself to bringing Bonnie and Clyde down after they take embarrassing photos of him and then throw him in a river when he spits at Bonnie, these outlaws don't look so bad. The film shows Bonnie and Clyde doomed to failure almost from the start. As their fame spreads, more and more law enforcement people want to catch them. The better known they are, the more likely it is that people will recognize them and report them to the police. The last half of the film dramatizes the downward spiral of their exploits.

To what extent do the rampages of Bonnie and Clyde answer to the dreams of the 1960s-era audiences that flocked to see the film when it was released? Surely there were numerous films that catered to the youthful American audience desire for escape from middle class conformity and blandness.

Biloxi Blues

Neil Simon's plays about bleached out New Yorkers are not to my tastes. Biloxi Blues (1983), based on the play of the same title, may be the best Neil Simon play (in film form) I have seen. It's essentially a memoir of Simon's days in basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1945. Directed by Mike Nichols, the film focuses on a small group of young men in their first days and weeks of basic training. They are young, fresh, and just out of high school. They all believe they are headed towards mortal combat in the Pacific, and maybe even death.

In many ways there is nothing particularly remarkable about the film. Matthew Broderick is good as the main character Eugene Morris Jerome, obviously based on Simon, who records his impressions of his experiences in a journal. Late in the film one of his friends finds the journal and reads from it to assembled friends—giving Eugene's opinions about every man in the group. Christopher Walken as the basic training sergeant Toomey is the most interesting character in the film. He demands total obedience from his recruits and has a streak of cruelty in him that takes aim at the more vulnerable boys in the group. He claims to have a silver-plate in his head, the result of a war wound, and at the end of the film, when he is apparently called to Fort Dix, NJ, for surgery, he appears to go crazy and threatens to shoot Eugene.

Despite the title, the South in Biloxi Blues is incidental. The South means humidity, mosquitoes, heat, swamps. It offers some slight local color. In one interlude Eugene has a budding romance from a young Gulfport girl he meets at a USO social. But what's more important in the scene than her Southern background is the fact that they both are young, this is their first romance, they both know they will never see each other again. The best scene in the film involves Eugene's first sexual experience, with a prostitute from Gulfport. The scene is hilarious, but the character of the prostitute with her gentle Southern accent and her lackadaisical attitude is the real source of humor. The South as a place in this film is relevant for its Otherness—it is not the place the characters in this film are from; it is not home; it is somewhere else, thus strange and foreign, though with a few exceptions the most one sees of it is from within a military barracks.

It's obvious this film is based on a stage play, and certain scenes seem taken straight from the stage. But the film is entertaining enough.

My Cousin Vinny

The opening moments of My Cousin Vinny (1992) make clear that the film is taking place in the deep American South. Seeming to echo (unintentionally) the opening images of Huston's Wise Blood, this film shows us scene after scene of Southern imagery: a roadside hubcaps stand, a roadside fruit stand, a hand-lettered sign advertising "Dirt for Sale," another sign offering "Free Cow Manure," a columned mansion, a barking dog, a unpainted wooden store with a Confederate flag, and a rundown convenience store called "Sac-o-suds." The result is that the setting is established as a stereotypical South. What's more, two teenagers from the North are driving towards Florida and, shortly after entering Alabama, are arrested, by mistake, for robbing a roadside store and killing its owner. The local law enforcement officials are convinced they have the right suspects because, in part, they are Northerners, Yankees. The judge and the prosecutor assume the case is a no-brainer, that no one will question the evidence, and, believing the boys guilty, do not bother to look past the obvious facts of the case. Corruption and ineptitude are also stereotypical traits ascribed to Southern policemen and judicial systems.

Unlike other films which use similar scenarios, My Cousin Vinny makes the use of stereotypes a two-sided affair. When Vinny, the second cousin of one of the arrested boys, shows up to defend them, he is the incarnation of a Brooklyn character—heavy accent, swagger, garish leather boots, and a purse-laden and loudly dressed girlfriend who has probably never been outside the borders of New York City in her life. At first it appears that Vinny's appearance is not going to serve the interests of the two arrested boys. Eventually, he proves his mettle.

Undermining stereotypes, using them for the sake of humor, is the point of My Cousin Vinny, an amusing film. Vinny proves he can be a good lawyer. His girlfriend proves she is intelligent. The Southern prosecutor and judge prove they are human beings after all. Once all these characters break through the obscuring façade of their outer stereotypical surfaces, all is peace and light.

George Washington

In George Washington (2000) David Gordon Green depicts an alternative Southern landscape and in doing so redefines the terms in which the South can be cinematically envisioned. Rather than a traditional rural South, or an urban modern South, he presents a South in some transitional new world. Watching the opening scenes of this film is in some sense like watching the opening scenes of Terrence Malick's film The New World. The similarity is not coincidental since Malick is Green's model. But the South we see in Malick's film is a South undefined—it is all Nature, unspoiled, undeveloped, unmarked by any historical or ideological conflict. It is only after we begin watching The New World that we realize that the land on which the events of the film take place is the land that will become part of the South and of America, and that the early events depicted in the film mark the first step in the process of defining that geographical space.

George Washington shows us the side streets and back lots and overgrown weeds of the lower-economic districts of a mid-size Southern town. This is not a space we can recognize from most previous films about the South (Nothing but a Man is a significant exception). It therefore appears unaccompanied by the values and themes of other Southern films—no plantation houses, no drag races, no battle of the old South with the New. It quickly becomes apparent that African American children will play a role, and soon after them a few African American adults and young labor class white men. With their appearance some themes of race and racial conflict become apparent, but even then they do not appear in their traditional forms.

The children who are the main characters are from the lower-economic class. They are not profoundly poverty-stricken—perhaps lower-middle class would be a more appropriate designation. Poverty in itself is an indicator of racial themes. Yet the film refrains from fully embracing this kind of theme by including young white and black men who work for the railroad. They all work under the same sets of circumstances. When Damascus—a young black man around 30—quits his job on the railroad after being docked a day's wages , we could possibly see racial implications in the act of a white manager firing a black laborer, yet the situation could quite possibly have involved the white manager firing one of the white employees.

The world presented to us in George Washington is not explicitly a racially defined world, though the racial conflicts of the modern South are implied. Rather it is a world defined by poverty, limited horizons, and the aimlessness of modern times.

It would be easy enough to view George Washington as a sociological tract focused on children without parents—children of the modern Southern ghetto. Once again, the film does not categorize its characters racially, and though we can draw conclusions from the film based on race, they are not the main concern.

Descriptions of the plot of this film usually mention that it is about the efforts of a group of children to respond to the unexpected death of a friend. The film explores that issue, but it is not the film's only or even central concern. Rather it is about children and the experience of being children in a modern world. It's also about the struggle of children to define themselves and to come to grips with approaching and uncertain adulthood. To me the central concern is not the child's death (though he does seem to be the main character of the film's first third) but the boy named George.

George is clearly a strange child. Everyone knows he has a soft spot in his skull, the result of a fontanel that never grew together. He apparently has to wear a football helmet to protect his skull (whether this is his choice or something he has been ordered to do by a doctor is not clear). He can't swim or immerse his head in water because he has severe headaches as a result. People give him a wide berth. Some people may think he is mentally deficient, and his strange behavior at times may bear up the impression. Yet the more we get to know him, the less we consider his possible defects, and the more perhaps we see him as the representative character of the film, the vessel for the film's message, if indeed it has a message.

Nasia, the film's narrator, a 13-year old and preternaturally mature young girl, idolizes George. (Nasia's poetic, poignant voice specifically recalls the voices of Sissy Spacek in Badlands and Linda Manz in Days of Heaven). The film's first scene shows Nasia and Buddy in the act of breaking up. Nasia later tells Buddy's friend that she broke up with him because he was too much like a child. She wants someone more grown up. After Buddy, she chooses George. It's clear she comes to believe in him as a person who will do great things, who will become president of the United States, who is (after he endangers his own life by jumping in a swimming pool to save a drowning child) a hero. George is specifically associated with the first president of the United States, George Washington. He is attracted to figures of fame and prominence. After a July 4^th parade, he sees the man who played Uncle Sam in the parade and tells him that he was the best thing about the parade.

A lot of what George wants for himself is really what Nasia tells us that he wants, or imagines that he wants: "My friend George said that he was gonna live to be 100 years old. He said - He said that he was going to be the president of the United States. I wanted to see him lead a parade and wave a flag on the Fourth of July. He just wanted greatness." George becomes her way of dreaming about the future, and even though in some ways he might be the most disadvantaged character in the film, his aspirations, specifically his desire to be a hero, to save people's lives, to have significance, are what attracts her.

Others in the film, if not desiring fame and recognition, at least agonize over what they will do, over the future. One of Nasia's friends wants to become pregnant because she feels that would be her entrée to adulthood. Vernon, a large boy in early adolescence, feels ridden with guilt for Buddy's death. He doesn't know what to do. He tells Sonya, "I just wish I had my own tropical island, I wish . . . I wish I was . . . I could go to China, I wish I could go out of The States . . . I wish I had my own planet, I wish I . . . I wish there were 200 of me, man . . . I wish I could just sit around with computers and just brainstorm all day man. I wish I was born again." He and Sonya, who is probably no more than 10, try to run away and leave town together, but she rolls the car they steal and they limp painfully away. Sonya thinks of herself as "no good": I don't have much to look forward to. I ain't smart. I ain't no good. My whole family ain't no good. And for the first time in my life, I don't got no excuses for my future."

Another way that George Washington doesn't fit the mold of many other Southern films is its depiction of race. For the most part the children in the film have not grown old enough to become conscious of race. Sonya is the only white child in the film. She's innocent, corrupted already, and blonde, and to the black kids in the film she's simply another one of their group. Buddy and later George have frequent heart-to-heart talks with Rico Rice (played by Rob Schneider, the only name actor in the film). There is no sense of condescension in Rico—he talks to Buddy and George as equals—the fact that they are black and younger than he doesn't come into play.

In a more general way, the white railroad workers that Rico works with and with whom he pals around—advising them on how to eat a healthy diet—talk to the black kids just as kids, and the kids themselves see nothing out of the way in spending time with the white men. This is a South where race matters hardly as much as class and economic status. One might argue that this is unrealistic, and that the film portrays a world that doesn't exist.

In a sense Green uses the black and white characters as vehicles for giving expression to his own sentiments about life and fate and the future. Do kids Nasia's age and George's age really talk like the characters in this film? Do they have the thoughts these characters have? Is any 12-year-old as self-conscious and aware as Nasia is?

Lil Abner

The musical film Lil Abner (1959) is a version of the Broadway musical which was in turn a version of Al Capp's comic strip which itself parodied and satirized Southern mountain folk. Capp actually used Southern mountain folk to parody and satirize American culture and politics. Capp's comic strip was idiosyncratic, distinctive, and often wrong-headed. But it had at its best originality and intelligence. The film strips away from its source the controversy and provocativeness and most of the wrong-headedness and gives us in their place dancing Broadway actors pretending to be hillbillies.

I have not seen the musical, but there is little merit in the film, with the exception of a couple of memorable musical numbers, especially Stubby Kay as Marryin' Sam singing about the revered town hero, General Jubiliation T. Cornpone, whose ineptness allowed (according to town tradition and an inscription on his statue written by Abraham Lincoln) the North to win the Civil War.

The plot of this film focuses on the decision of the federal government to move atomic bomb testing site from Nevada (where it is a nuisance to Las Vegas) to the "most unnecessary place in the world," which turns out to be Dogpatch, the home of all the characters in the film. Because the first A-bomb test will prevent the annual Sadie Hawkins Day Race, wherein unmarried women of Dogpatch get to chase and try to catch the men they love, the citizenry begins looking for a way to prove their town really is necessary. An equally important plot is Daisy Mae Yokum's desire to get Lil Abner to propose to her. She's also being courted by Earthquake McGoon, a wrestler whom no one likes.

Folks break into song at a moment's notice in this film. Those moments don't come often enough. As bad as most of the songs are, they're better than the non-singing portions of the film. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for the songs. The dance sequence surrounding the Sadie Hawkins Day Race brings a little life to the film, but the race runs on too long.

Some of Al Capp's themes filter through into the film: the bureaucracy of the federal government, the corruption and incompetence of politicians, suspicion of science and technology, the complexity and pretense of the modern civilized world in comparison to the innocence and simplicity of the people of Dogpatch. These people are, according to the film, ignorant, uneducated, licentious, and full of life. They talk with cartoon accents that seem, ironically, taken directly from the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris. There are no African Americans in the film, though there is one Indian, a dancing Indian. Few if any African Americans would have lived in the mountains where Dogpatch might have been located, and that makes it easy for this film to evade any awareness of the civil rights movement in progress at the time of its release. There's a lot of talk about the Civil War and several obvious flaunting of the Confederate battle flag.

It's difficult to bridge the gap of fifty years between the present time and 1959 when this film appeared. It's difficult to imagine an audience liking this film—its manufactured and accidental cornpone, its fundamental inauthenticity. The film was made entirely on a stylized set. Everything is stylized, brightly colored, as if in homage to the story's comic strip origins. Some of the characters do a respectable job of embodying their characters, especially Billie Hayes and Joey Marks as Ma and Pa Yokum. Leslie Parrish is fine as Daisy Mae—she at least looks the part. It's easy to see in Lil Abner the precursor of Jethro Bodine in the Beverly Hillbillies television series, which borrowed liberally from the comic strip and was more lively than this film ever manages to be.

The closest most of the actors in this film ever came to mountain folk was probably through reading the comic strip.

Mississippi Marsala

In Mississippi Marsala (1991) director Mira Nair examines racism, both in the American South and elsewhere, through a different lens. The South in this film provides a landscape known for a history of difficult racial relations. We see elements of this racism in the film, mere hints, really. The primary focus is on relations between African Americans and South Asian Indians. By focusing on these groups, Nair views race in a new and unfamiliar context that sheds light on more familiar discussions of the subject.

Nair parallels the experiences of an Indian family in Uganda and in Mississippi. The family regarded Uganda as its home. Meena, the daughter, has never even visited India. She knows no other country but Uganda. When Idi Amin foments racial discord in Uganda, and when Meena's father Roshan Seth makes comments critical of Amin in a BBC interview, the family is forced to leave, along with all other non-Africans. As Roshan Seth's African friend explains to him, "Africa is only for Africans now, black Africans." As a result the family moves to Greenwood, Mississippi, to run a hotel while Roshan Seth pursues law suits against the Ugandan government, seeking the return of confiscated property. Part of the reason why Roshan Seth and others like him were expelled is that they had become wealthy and had been accused of a certain clannishness—Indian families did not, for example, allow their children to marry Africans.

In Greenwood, Meena grows up. At the time of the story, she is 24. Her parents expect her to marry an Indian. In a minor car accident, Meena runs into the van of a carpet cleaner named Demetrius Williams, played by Denzel Washington. Demetrius, with the assistance of some white citizens in the town, has secured a bank loan to start a carpet cleaning company. He has been successful with the company and always pays his bank notes on time. After the accident, he and Meena begin to see each other and fall in love. When their relationship is discovered (they are found sleeping together in a hotel room by one of Meena's relatives), there are extreme reactions in the community from both sides of the racial fence. Meena's father forbids the relationship, though he rationalizes his opposition by saying that he does not want his daughter to suffer racism in the same way he did.

In a scene shortly after the car accident, one of Meena's relatives, a successful businessman in Greenwood, urges Demetrius not to file suit against his family because of the collision. He tells Demetrius that all non-white people are "colored" people, the point being that they all suffer racism and therefore share a common bond. On the basis of this common plight, he appeals to Demetrius, who assures him he has no plans to sue.

After Demetrius' relationship with Meena is discovered, however, the common bond disappears. The Indians unanimously oppose her relationship with a black man. The same relative who appealed to Demetrius not to sue in turn goes to white business owners in town and asks them not to do business with Demetrius' carpet cleaning company. He quickly loses all his clients and the bank threatens to repossess his van. White citizens of the town complain and joke about Demetrius' relationship with Meena. Meena's father decides to move back to Africa to prevent his daughter from involvement with Demetrius.

Demetrius receives criticism from family and friends, from the African American community in general, for his relationship with Meena. His sister accuses him of rejecting black women. His father accuses him of causing trouble. His father, whom Demetrius loves, has spent his life working in subservient roles. He appears to believe in the necessity of playing it safe, of not antagonizing the white power structure by any action or word that would seem to offend prevailing racial codes. In a sense, Demetrius by developing his carpet cleaning business has done the same—it is a service-oriented business, one involving manual labor, not one that threatens to upset the racial order in Greenwood.

Both sides—the Indians and the African Americans—reveal their racial clannishness and their own racist attitudes in reacting to Meena and Demetrius' relationship. Several short scenes show white citizens in Greenwood reacting to the fracas. One old man gleefully remarks on the problems that the Indian family is experiencing with the African American Demetrius.

The parallels that Nair has set up in the film—between Uganda and Greenwood, Mississippi, and between the Indians who have never been to India and the African Americans who have never been to Africa—work well. Both groups feel that where they are—Greenwood—is their home. Yet both groups experience conflict with other groups who see a specific racial identity associated with their citizenship in Uganda or in Greenwood--Uganda is for black Africans; Greenwood is for African-Americans, or for whites, but not for Indians.

Meena and Demetrius ultimately resolve their problems by breaking with their families and with Greenwood. They decide to move away and to work the carpet cleaning business together. The suggestion is that, given the racism both of Greenwood and of their families, this is the only way they can find satisfaction and happiness. This film therefore seems to argue that the solution to racial conflict does not lie in adherence to past traditions and beliefs but rather in living in the present, in accommodating oneself to present-day circumstances and situations.

In a sense this film is not so much about the South as it is about two groups of people who live in the South—Indians and African Americans—and specifically about Mira and Demetrius' families.

Mira Nair has an incisive sense of comedy and satire that comes through especially in her portrayal of various Indian characters in the film, especially one character in particular who covets his car and dresses and acts like a 1950s style Memphis hipster, with greased back hair, in the Elvis style. She's more careful not to satirize African American characters—perhaps she feels her identity as an Indian woman allows her a certain license in satirizing Indians, but not in satirizing other races. Yet she also has a genuine fondness for the humanity of all her characters —African, African American, Indian, or white. She recognizes the comic as well as tragic consequences that can arise from human conflict rooted in racial divisions.

Sharky’s Machine

In 1981, Burt Reynolds was approaching the end of the most significant decade of his career. It began in 1972 with the release of Deliverance, in which Reynolds played a straight role, one of the two most important roles in the film. It was a role that many thought could be his breakthrough into film—previously he had been mostly a television actor. Numerous films followed Deliverance, such as White Lightening (1973), W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings (1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Gator (1975), Semi-Tough (1977), Hooper (1978), The End (1978), and of course Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its first sequel (1980). In these films we see Reynolds in a number of roles--as an action hero, a comedian, a romantic lead, even a musical star. But the roles for which he is best known are those in which he plays a boisterous comic Southern prankster—a fool-killer with a moralistic desire to upend corrupt authority and in general to run amuck. Reynolds has been trying to live down this persona, and at the same time to take advantage of it, for much of the rest of his career. He's shown an impressive flexibility in the kinds of roles he is willing to take, and at the same time a resilient energy that led to the renovation of his career beginning with Boogie Nights and more recent films. He's even been willing to parody roles that made him famous—see Without a Paddle (2004) and The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). Although everyone knows his name, he did not ever become the great actor and star he aspired to become—there is a difference, of course, between acting and being a star. Reynolds was a competent actor and for a time a big-name star but in neither case a name for the ages.

Sharky's Machine (1981) may be the film in which Reynolds sought to alter the stakes of his career. Not only does he play a big city detective, but he also directs the film, based on the novel of the same title by Georgia writer William Diehl. I haven't read the novel and so cannot consider the film in relation to its source. The film on its own grounds is a mess, wavering back and forth between gritty police drama, character study, and romantic potboiler. Demoted to the vice squad at the beginning of the film because of a shooting that killed a civilian—Sharky is a highly skilled detective who wants to redeem himself and who is naturally disposed to rebel against authority. He and other members of the vice squad (all of them suffer from an inferiority complex because the vice squad is the least desirable assignment for a police officer) become involved in investigating a high-class prostitute who is murdered before their eyes. She is having an affair with a candidate for governor, and also with an Italian crime boss (played by Vittorio Gassman) who controls the city's power structure, and much of the police station. The plot grows increasingly dense and complex, and the film is not up to the complexity. There is a moment in the film when two Ninja assassins attack a police informant—you know at this moment that the film is floundering. Ninja assassins have little to do with the rest of the film--except for a final encounter with Sharky on a boat in the middle of (presumably) Lake Lanier. Ultimately, as Gassman's hitman brother kills off Sharky's colleagues, the film resolves all these complexities by transmogrifying into a film about Sharky's love for (some might say voyeuristic obsession with) the high-class prostitute apparently killed before his eyes.

The film has the quality of a 1970s era TV crime drama. Kojak comes specifically to mind. The cast includes actors who often appeared in such dramas (Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Henry Silva, Brian Keith).

Sharky's Machine is set in Atlanta. Reynold's choice of this film based on a Georgia book, the name of his production company (Deliverance Productions), and his use of Atlanta seems a deliberate effort to capitalize on his regional connections. Oddly, the film seems almost a deliberate attempt to reconceive Atlanta as a big national city with no regional distinctiveness. There is, of course, no reason why a film would need to adhere to preconceptions about how a regional city should be portrayed. What the film does for the most part is treat Atlanta as if it is just another version of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. The music is decidedly non-regional—the brassy sort of music you would expect to hear in a film set on the strip of Las Vegas. Few characters speak with Southern accents, and the few who do are glaring, almost awkward exceptions. Reynolds himself underplays his accent—it's hardly apparent. One reason may be that many of the characters in the film may have moved to Atlanta from somewhere else. Even in 1981 Atlanta was beginning to take on its current character as a city of national and international dimensions (hence the Ninja assassins), but few people in 1981 would have thought of the city in that way, though many complained that it was losing, or had lost, its regional character. A few scenes are specifically tied to Atlanta—one in a night club where a blues band is playing (Atlanta is not known as a center of the blues, but at least the scene ties the film to the South), another set in the infield of Atlanta Stadium, where the Braves play. For the most part, Atlanta is presented as simply another big American city. The film as a whole is bland and without distinctive character. This may be a result of the director's failure to take advantage of the regional aspects of the city where the story takes place—doing so would at least have given the film a sense of place and a specific geographical identity. It might also have helped to emphasize what may be a theme of the film, with its Italian henchmen and Ninja assassins and police officers and bad men who seem to come from all over the nation—that the world is coming to Atlanta and one thing the world brings with it is big-time crime and corruption. (This is not to suggest that Atlanta did not already have enough crime and corruption of its own).

In 1982, Reynolds starred with Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It marked, in my mind, the end of his great decade. The South that provided the location for his most successful films had lost its commercial and cultural appeal (Ronald Reagan had whipped Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential elections), and Reynolds had demonstrated the extent and limits of his talents. He was at his best as the Southern prankster and good ol' boy, and neither Hollywood nor (apparently) Reynolds himself was interested in further incarnations of that role. The nation moved forward. Better romantic character actors made their way onto the scene, and Reynolds as a comic hero was no longer fashionable—a later generation of comedians replaced him. He would struggle for another fifteen years until appearances in such films as Boogie Nights (1997) and Mystery, Alaska (1999) brought about a resurrection of his career, though probably on the basis of terms he would not have chosen for himself.

The Night of the Hunter

Towards the top of my list of favorite films about the American South is the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter, based on the Davis Grubbs novel of the same name. This is the only film ever directed by stage and screen actor Charles Laughton, and its commercial and critical failure following its release convinced Laughton and his producers that he should not direct again. When the film was released, critical reaction was mixed and reflected confusion on the part of reviewers and probably also on the part of audiences. The film was an unusual combination of crime drama, film noir, children's fantasy, and stylized, expressionist motifs. It combined scenes of comedy and tragedy, of violence and religion. Parts of the film were conventional; parts seemed almost amateurish. It is not surprising given the kinds of films being made in the 1950s that The Night of the Hunter sank from view soon after its release. It ran counter to established trends. It took 20 years for critics and viewers to recover this film and to begin to recognize its considerable merits.

Admittedly, the inclusion of The Night of the Hunter in a course about Southern films may seem problematic for some. In fact, the more I researched the background of this film, the more problematic its inclusion became. It is first of all not set in the South, or at least not in the deep South. It apparently takes place on or near the banks of the Ohio River, probably where it borders West Virginia. The film certainly looks and feels Southern, set in a rural region during the time of the Depression. A number of scenes show rolling farmland landscapes, with barns such as one would expect to find in the tobacco lands of Tennessee and Kentucky. A number of characters have Southern accents. It has many of the elements we expect to find in Southern literature—for examples, concern with religion and a gothic interest in violence and murder. It also expresses an agrarian skepticism towards cities, progress, technology, and the modern world and the general decay of values in the modern world. So for these reasons I've felt justified including The Night of the Hunter on my list.

But there are further complications. The traditional conception of Southern literature is that it is written by people who have spent all or most of their lives in the American South and that it expresses attitudes and deals with subjects generally associated with the South. We know that this view is being supplanted with other views, and that Southern literature is more diverse than traditional definitions would allow, but I will let tradition suffice for the purpose of this paper. I must further add that I tend to view films in the same way I view literature, that is, as texts suitable for interpretation. I am not a film scholar. My training has been that of a literary critic and teacher. Film has all the basic elements of fiction—narrative, plot, characters, themes, images, setting, and so on. So I treat it as literature. But in thinking about certain films as Southern films, there is a major difference between literature and film. Literature is usually the product of single authors. Film is collaborative. The director is often credited as the auteur, but others, such as screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, and actors, also have a major role in the final product. There is also not a major film industry in the American South. Films are made here, of course, but the people who make them are not typically Southern. Thus in a simplistic way it may be possible to argue that while Southern literature in its traditional definition is by Southerners and about the South, and reflective of attitudes one might associate with the South, Southern films are largely made by non-Southerners who use the South as a landscape on which to explore attitudes that may be Southern or that may not be.

This is certainly the case with The Night of the Hunter. It was filmed on a Hollywood set. Most of the principal actors were not Southerners. Laughton was British. Laughton convinced James Agee, the Tennessee writer who had written the screenplay for John Huston's The African Queen, to write the screenplay for this new film, but the evidence seems to suggest that Laughton did not like Agee's screenplay and partially or largely rewrote it. It is possible that Laughton saw Davis Grubbs' novel The Night of the Hunter as a "Southern" work and that in hiring a Southern writer such as James Agee to write the screenplay he was reflecting this fact. There is conflicting evidence as to how much of the Agee screenplay was actually used in the film. The best discussion of this question that I have read, based on close study of extant drafts of the screenplay, is by Jeffrey J. Folks, "James Agee's Filmscript for The Night of the Hunter," in The Southern Quarterly (1995). Folks suggests, contrary to what others have said, that much of Agee's screenplay appears in the film. Whatever the case might be, the film does reflect his influence.

A number of reasons explain Laughton's desire to make a film of Davis Grubb's novel. He first of all liked the novel, which he read before it was published. He set out to make a faithful adaptation and worked closely with Grubbs in developing the film. The themes that he emphasized in the film were religious extremism, the dire economic conditions of the Depression and the suffering of the rural poor as a result, the victimization of women and of children, and the loss of values in the modern world. His emphasis on the rural landscapes, on the religious extremism and misogyny of his main character Harry Powell, and on the clash of modern values and the modern world against more traditional values—these are emphases he accepted from the novel—are ones that are characteristic of much modern Southern writing. They make it convenient as well as logical to view this film as a Southern work, and at the least as a work which in tone and content is consanguine with other Southern literature.

For those of you unfamiliar with this film, here is a barebones summary. A man named Ben Harper robs a bank and kills two men in the process. He gives the money he has stolen to his son John and directs him to hide and protect the money at all costs. Harper is captured by police, sent to prison, and executed, but before his death he tells his cellmate, an itinerant preacher named Harry Powell, about the hidden money—but does not say where the money is. Powell, who is in prison for stealing a car but who in fact has been traveling through the countryside romancing and marrying vulnerable widows, killing them, and taking their money, decides to find the widow of his executed cellmate and marry her. Soon after this, Powell finds and marries the widow, he realizes that she does not know where the money is and that the children do, so he kills her and begins pressuring John and his sister Pearl to give up the money. They refuse and flee, escaping down the river in a small boat. They are taken in by an elderly woman, played by Lillian Gish, who befriends orphans. She is a pious, virtuous woman who protects parentless children from the evil of modern times, and from people like Harry Powell, whom she wounds with her rifle when he tries to break into her house, and who at the end of the film has been captured and is headed for trial and execution.

Three characteristics make this film remarkable. One is the character of Harry Powell as portrayed by Robert Mitcham. He is an evil and psychopathic serial killer who believes that he is carrying out God's word. His hatred of women, his animalistic greed, and his willingness to kill the children in order to get what he wants make him one a truly chilling character. Mitcham never surpassed or equaled this performance during the remainder of his career. You can't put out of your mind his singing of "leaning on the everlasting arms"—it's not comforting. The second memorable element involves the visual qualities of the film. In cinematography the film ranges from ultra realism to stylized expressionism to fanciful lyricism. One thinks of this film in terms of the visual images that characterize it: the hands of Harry Powell tattooed with the words Love and Hate, the church-like bedroom where Harry kills his wife; the gruesome image of a dead woman sitting in an old jalopy on the bottom of the river, her throat cut; the lyrical images of the children fleeing downriver from their pursuer, and so on. Cinematographer Stanley Cortez deserves much of the credit for this aspect of the film. The third characteristic involves the film's narratives, which fuse the plights of children and widows in the Depression and a young boy's determination to carry out his promise to his father with an elemental battle between virtue and evil.

This is not a perfect film, and from the technical standards of 2007 it may seem dated in ways, especially in several scenes involving special effects. Parts of it are contrived or overstated. My students were particularly put off by a series of scenes in the film's central section where the fleeing children are juxtaposed with images of wild animals that are supposed to suggest that the children live in a world where the strong victimize the weak, where there are predators and their victims. The Night of the Hunter is clearly a "made" film that seeks to create its own world with its own set of standards, not one that seems to emulate the world we inhabit. I like to think of it as a nightmarish fairy tale, the kind that keeps you awake at night. Yet the imperfections, the utter distinctiveness of this film as compared to most American films of the 1950s, or of any other decade for that matter, make this film what it is.