559 - The Southerner, France, 1945. Dir. Jean Renoir.
Work for yourself. Grow your own crops.
Grow your own crop.
Uncle Pete plants that seed of desire in Sam--desire being the starting point of all achievement. Uncle Pete is lying on his back in a cotton field, having been suddenly seized with a fatal sickness. Uncle Pete has been a cotton cropper all his life, working for someone else, and it has kept him poor. His nephew Sam Tucker and Sam's wife Nona work alongside him, and they come to his aid. A large cotton sack makes for a good pillow in a time of duress.
Sam's work is seasonal. He gets paid a salary, and when the cotton crop is brought in he will find work elsewhere. He has already decided that he will go work on a bulldozer for his next job.
But Uncle Pete on his deathbed changes Sam's mind, and as they bury Peter Tucker, planting a wooden cross because they do not have money for a tombstone, Sam determines that he will follow Uncle Pete's advice. He will work for himself.
He will be his own man.
Sam talks to his wife Nona, and she encourages him. So he talks to Boss, and Ruston agrees. He has land Sam can rent, as long as Sam does a good job with it. He observes that Sam is now taking a risk, joining the ranks of entrepreneurs who start their own businesses. If the crop fails, Sam will have no income. At least working for a company ensures him a steady paycheck regardless of the weather and the outcome of the crop.
Paul Harvey plays Ruston. Not Paul Harvey the radio legend. But Paul Harvey the actor. One of those great character actors who appeared in many movies, from 1915 to 1956.
Sam is willing to take the risk.
So in a film that came out 16 years before The Beverly Hillbillies, Sam loads all his belongings on the back of his truck, with his Granny sitting in the midst of it in her rocking chair.
Beulah Bondi plays Sam's Granny. She is fabulous. A cantankerous old coot who pretends to complain about every detail in life. You know Beulah Bondi as Jimmy Stewart's gracious and sophisticated mother Ma Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), filmed just a few months after this one and looking quite a bit younger. She played Jimmy Stewart's mother four times--also in Clarence Brown's Of Human Hearts (1938), in George Stevens' Vivacious Lady (with Ginger Rogers) (1938), and in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She also starred with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in George Stevens' Penny Serenade (1941). We will see her again in at least two more movies we have coming up--Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and Anthony Mann's The Furies (1950).
When they arrive, the Tucker's discover that they have a lot of work ahead of them. The land is grown over and will take time to clear. The house is actually a shed, with holes in the ceilings and the walls. The well is stopped up. They have no clean water and no shelter to speak of.
Sam Tucker is a fine man. A hard worker full of hope and promise. But will he be able to overcome all these obstacles?
He goes fishing, and he sets aside the biggest fish of his catch to give to his new neighbor Devers. He will ask Devers for a trade, for his wife Nona to come fetch water from Devers' well. But Devers turns out to be a little less neighborly than Sam anticipates. He has a daughter named Becky, who is all too happy to meet the new neighbor and assist him. She seems lonely for community as well as naturally friendly. Devers also has a nephew named Finley, wild and strange a perhaps a bit touched in the head. But Devers himself seems to be harboring some secret, some reason for not reaching out to Sam with a helping hand.
Finley is played by the great character actor Norman Lloyd (not to be confused with the great character actor Lloyd Nolan). You may think of him as an older actor from his performances in Dead Poets Society (1989), The Age of Innocence (1993), or The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky (2000). We saw him earlier in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952). But before that, he was a blonde of great energy who appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock films Saboteur (1942) and Spellbound (1945). Norman Lloyd is still alive. He is 104 years old. Born on November 8, 1914, he is two years older than his living contemporary, Gone with the Wind's Olivia de Havilland, who was born on July 1, 1916, and is 102. And his last film came out a mere three years ago, when he was 101 years old.
Devers is rude to Sam, and he resists his efforts to be neighborly, but he does concede to let Nona collect water in exchange for the fish--if Sam will repair the well rope for him. Sam proves to be resourceful. He uses Granny's blanket for fabric for his daughter Daisy's coat, so that she may go to school and not catch "her death of old." He smokes a possum out of a hollow tree, with the help of his dog Zumi, so that the family may have food to eat. He clears the land, shoes the mules, ploughs, hoes. and sets a line for Lead Pencil.
Lead Pencil is the lake's largest catfish, older than Granny, with whiskers as big as lead pencils. It is Dever's great desire, for meat, for money, but mainly for local glory. If Sam catches Lead Pencil before Devers does, his already unkind demeanor might just explode.
Jotty gets sick. Jotty is Sam's son Jot. Why, then, you ask, is his daughter named Daisy and not Tittle? Ask the Turners. Granny recognizes Jott's illness as Spring Sickness. She knows, as she has lost three of her own kin to it. Nona takes Jotty to the doctor. He confirms what Daisy has been learning at school. That a diet of possum and fish provides insufficient nutrition to meet Jot's daily dietary needs. Get a cow. Buy one. Rent one. Trade for one. Whatever you do, find a pint, or a better quart, of milk to give Jot every day. Feed him vegetables. Give him lemons. A glass of lemonade twice a day.
Minute Maid should get a hold of this movie. Forget an apple a day. Doctor says a glass of lemonade twice a day. Coca Cola, Minute Maid's parent, would be pleased with the results of that ad campaign.
Sam goes to the General Store to talk to owner Harmie about helping him. His city friend Tim runs into him there and offers to buy him a beer. So they go over to the saloon, and the Bartender's daughter flirts with Sam. Sam is a good man and happily married. He resists her easily enough. So Tim tries her. He is single. And she rebuffs him. Tim tries to talk Sam into getting a factory job with him. He makes seven bucks a day. Why slave your life away farming when you could make good money working in town? Sam explains that he wants to be his own man, own his own land, and have the potential for making it big one day. Tim accuses Sam of being a gambler. Rolling the dice. Swinging for the fences. The film compares the division of labor at various points, and finally affirms the need for all positions to make society function.
Tim asks for change for his fiver. The Bartender says he gave him a single. Sam encourages Tim to drop it and walk away. They go outside and Tim goes back in. Sam tries to stop him. "I wouldn't start nothing, Tim. This is apt to cost you more than four dollars." The damage caused by the fight Tim instigates looks to cost in the hundreds. The Bartender's daughter is more than happy to throw glass bottles back at Tim's head.
On a musical note, this film, like so many others we have seen, contains a jukebox. The Bartender starts it when the men enter, before knowing a fight is about to brew. We hear "La Cucaracha" and "Beer Barrel Polka," instrumentals, no vocals.
Sam goes to Devers to barter for cow milk. His son is desperately ill, but Devers does not care. He gives all his cow milk to his own pigs, mixing it in with the slop. His daughter Becky tries to sneak some to Sam, but Finley catches her and knocks it on the ground. He threatens her and Sam both in his wild and angry manner. Tim and Harmie bring Sam a cow--a female of course, which Daisy names Uncle Walter--and that helps Jot in the short term, but soon Devers cows and pigs just happen to get out and stomp to pieces Nona's entire vegetable garden. Sam suspects Finley is behind it--as he is playing a pennywhistle like the Pied Piper, guiding the animals where he wants them to go--so Sam goes after Devers, and they fight, this time as if to the death.
In the process, Devers admits his own jealousy. He was here first, years ago, and he tried to make a go of it when he was young and full of hope. He lost his wife. Four years later he lost his son. Sam is now working the land Devers himself was trying to buy. He is going to come in and take what Devers has tried for years to acquire, and Devers still feels the loss it has cost him.
When Sam catches Lead Pencil, Devers is licked. Becky has gone to Nona for help, but the men negotiate and Devers concedes to give the Tuckers his vegetable garden and his well water in exchange for the fish. It means that much to him.
The General Store owner Harmie proposes to Sam's widowed mother Mama. His grandmother Granny lives with him but his mother Mama, Granny's daughter, does not. We have not really seen her until now. They have a grand wedding. Everyone is happy. Even Granny is happy. She and her peers sing "Beulah Land." They have a square dance. A real one. Tim gets drunk and gets made fun of. Sam gets tipsy and gets made fun of. Everyone laughs.
Then the rain comes.
The downpour.
The seasonal storm.
They race to the house. The house is damaged. The yard is flooded. The cow is in the river. The crops are destroyed.
All whole year's work lost.
Tim goes into the river to try to help Sam recover the cow, but Tim himself gets in trouble, grasping on to a tree branch, about to be swept away.
Sam has to leave his cow to rescue Tim.
When it is all over he is through. Done. Sam has had it. He is licked.
Until he gets back to the house, and his loving wife is repairing things with a smile on her face, with joy in her heart, and with words of hope and encouragement coming from her lips.
With Granny herself joining in, speaking words of hope and determination for the first time since she sang that classic hymn.
She tells of a time forty-three years ago when it happened to them, "only it was worse, much worse," and how she and her husband Fayette rose up and overcame.
Nona and Granny infuse Sam with confidence. The confidence to go on. The American spirit.
As told in English by our French director. With moments of poetic realism that seem real enough to be really happening. Such as when Jot tells Sam his foot hurts. Or when Daisy invites Granny to eat of the fox grapes, and then teases her with a garter snake.
Jean Renoir was some kind of director. That he could work in so many genres, in so many styles, in so many countries, over so many decades, and keep making so many great films. Here he is in the middle of a five-film run in America, in Hollywood, filming an all-American film, using a screenplay that he wrote himself. Some at the time criticized him for inauthenticity, but I buy it. The language is the kind of language I heard the old-timers say when I was growing up. It feels natural to me. It is not pushed or forced like so many Hollywood productions of or characters from "the South" can be.
Renoir is working off a novel entitled Hold Autumn in Your Hand (1941), by George Sessions Perry, and he may be getting some of the dialogue from him.
The film is mistitled The Southerner. It takes place in Texas. If the Southern states are siblings to each other, then Texas is our cousin. It is not the South, although it is kin. It is Texas. The film should be The Texan. Or something else.
The man who plays Sam Tucker is himself from Texas, which has a lot to do with why we believe him. He is from Austin. Before there was Ethan Hawke. Before there was Owen Wilson. Before there was Matthew McConaughey. There was Zachary Scott. This is only his third film. We saw him earlier in his fourth, which came out the same year as this one, Mildred Pierce (1945).
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/325-mildred-pierce-united-states-1945.html
The Southerner aims to tell the truth about a man who wants to be somebody. Who wants to work with his own two hands. To own land. To take risks. To work honestly. To provide for his family. To overcome hardships. To triumph over adversity. To act neighborly. To contribute to society. To live nobly. And about his family who stand beside him. And the friends who come to his aid when others do not. It leaves a lot on the table. Many of the characters enter and exit with minimal development. Story lines are dropped. The bar fight, for example, has no consequences, and the Bartender's daughter shows up at the wedding as part of the party. But the focus is on Sam and his family. The Tuckers and their land. And how they persevere.
Like Pierre Charles l'Enfant (1754-1825).
Like the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834).
Like Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859).
Like Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904).
Like Tony Parker.
Jean Renoir is a Frenchman
who has given us something
All American.
Ma ain't so young, but her heart is still full of fire.
You lie here, Uncle Pete. Get some water.
My darned old heart.
I'm thinking I might stay here, get me a bulldozing job.
Work for yourself. Grow your own crops. Grow your own crop.
I wish we could raise him a tombstone.
Granny! Granny! Look at the fox grapes. Don't you want any fox grapes, Granny?
I don't want to get mixed up with no copperheads. I'm already wearing one crooked toe one of them scoundrels ruined.
Don't be a hog, Daisy. Leave a few for the next fella.
I thought you was afeared of snakes.
I am, but that ain't no sign I got to starve to death, is it?
You know that little San Pedro place down near the river?
I've heard of it. I ain't never seen it.
Well, it belongs to Boss, too. Old Adj at the commissary was telling me it's for rent. It's been laying out there now for three years. It should be as rich as mud. In the old days Old Man Carn used to raise the best crops in the country on it.
Nonni, Nonni, Nonni, come here, and get this young dear and spank her or I'll do it myself.
I reckon I could ask Old Man Hewitt for his mules. He don't ever hardly use 'em nohow. Pay him a little bit with the crop.
Asking don't do no harm.
No, asking or work either don't harm a man.
Ruston Land & Water Co.
It's okay with me, Tucker. I ain't interested in that piece of land. It's too far away from my other properties. But just remember this: if I ain't satisfied with the way you're working I aim to break that contract any time I like.
If you're working for a big outfit, you don't get rich but you still get paid, even when the crop is bad.
I see you don't love me more than if I was a yellow dog.
I reckon I was thinking so hard about the land, I plum forgot about the house.
T'ain't much of a man that brings his babies and his womenfolks to freeze.
It needs a rest every once in awhile. Maybe that's the reason the LORD invented Sunday.
Oh, Sam. I just couldn't get along without you.
I believe you're as good as any man. It's right for you to be your own boss.
Hey, you too. I ain't getting younger, you know.
Sam Tucker, my own grandson, gone crazy as a bedbug.
Granny, you want some good hot coffee?
No, Sir. Nothing that comes out of that old pot don't tempt me at'all.
Put that blanket on you before you catch your death of cold.
I got two bare arms that's worth more than savings.
Lead Pencil, a catfish
The moon's been moving closer and closer to the North Star. The animals don't like that. They've been hiding out.
When you all look down on my cold dead face in that calcified box, you'll be sorry then.
You keep promising, Granny, but you never deliver.
You ain't even a real Tucker.
Well, you ain't either.
Sam Tucker is the boss here. He can cut up whatever he likes.
Wild bees don't care for folk coming and helping theirselves, you know.
That Sam of yours, he's most as good a man as my Fayette.
I reckon we can eat now, folks.
Much obliged, LORD. Looks like the Tuckers are gonna make the grade after all. Amen.
Just kept working and, my gosh, we done good.
If you don't give him milk and vegetables, anything I can do will be wasted.
It seems like in the city dollars grow faster than beans in the field.
All you farmers are just the same--gamblers. Year after year you starve yourself to death just to hit it big.
A man with money in his pocket, you're free as the wind.
So that's how it is. Nothing but a hickie old farmer, and the girls fall for you like a ton of bricks.
I wouldn't start nothing, Tim. This is apt to cost you more than four dollars.
When you got no money, you work for them what's got it. That's the rule.
I've got no milk for myself. It's all for the pigs.
If I wanted to give up, I wouldn't go back to Ruston.
I wanted to grow my own crop, and I aim to do it.
You can't do nothing. The law will call it an act of God.
And now, Devers, I'm gonna break your neck.
I'm mighty glad you started this, Tucker, especially with Finley here as a witness. That makes two of us that can talk to the law.
I just don't like folks trying to be better than they are.
Before you come, I was alone in your place. But now, if this goes on like this, all of this is gonna be yours. Even Finley told me you're setting line for Lead Pencil.
Go on back in the house, Becky. Best not bother about me anymore.
When we get rich, when our ship comes in, I want us to get one of them talking machines and a lot of sacred records. I want to sit on the gallery and drink pink lemonade with ice in it and hear "Beulah Land" you know.
Beulah Land (1876)
words Edgar Page Stites (1836-1921)
music John R. Sweney (1837-1899)
Oh, Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land
As on the highest mount I stand
I look away across the sea
Where mansions are prepared for me . . .
I never thought you'd treat your Granny like this. Sam Tucker, you're a criminal.
Why don't you wait until the water goes down.
This water'll never stop rising.
I was so plum wore out for awhile I didn't seem to believe in nothing no more. But now my clothes are starting to dry and I'm beginning to believe again.
Once in awhile you have to have a hunk of beef and a few ears of corn to fill up your belly.
Believe me, friend, it takes all kinds to make up this whole world.
If we ever get through with the plowing, I'm going back to the house and just sit and wait for my call to glory.
Yeah, Spring's gonna come a little early this year, Honey. I reckon we can start out seeding even before the twin days.
Never mind, Sugar. It could have been much worse.
