Modern clothing and attitudes take the post-civil war south a generation and a half after Lee's surrender, uppity northerners take over abandoned plantations and a daughter of Virginia returns home to battle a supposed family curse. Madeline Carroll is lovely as the heroine who loves impoverished Virginian Fred MacMurray whose family estate has ended up in the hands of New Yorker Sterling Hayden. Happy "darkies" (as everybody in the film, including the northerners, refers to them as) have refused to leave their impoverished former masters while crying foul every time a Yankee moves into their midst. MacMurray and Carroll are in love, but his wife (and mother of his cute daughter, Carolyn Lee) is too busy sinning in Europe to grant him a divorce, even though everybody proclaims her a saint. Yes, preposterous and even tacky, but filmed in gorgeous Technicolor, it actually ends up being a guilty pleasure with its "Song of the South" mentality that obviously never existed.
Made on the trail of "Gone With the Wind", this is only missing a dance number between Lee and one of the aging black men still living on Carroll's estate, one of whom ironically shows up after 30 years in prison on the very day Carroll returns home. Handsome blonde macho Sterling Hayden gives the best performance among the Caucasians, and try hard not to want to jump through your screen to hug Louise Beavers as the oh-so-sweet Aunt Ophelia, offering homespun advice to her beloved Carroll, and dedicated to the family whose ancestors enslaved hers. The fact that these characters are more devoted to the ancestors of those who enslaved them than to their own people is really hard to swallow, but then again, so is a lot of history presented through Hollywood's eyes.
Helen Broderick gets some nice moments as MacMurray's spinster distant cousin, continuously courted by a determined neighbor. The presence of ditsy Marie Wilson only over-proves the fact that this film is lost in a time warp, certain elements of it that don't seem true to the late 1800's/early 1900's setting.
Made on the trail of "Gone With the Wind", this is only missing a dance number between Lee and one of the aging black men still living on Carroll's estate, one of whom ironically shows up after 30 years in prison on the very day Carroll returns home. Handsome blonde macho Sterling Hayden gives the best performance among the Caucasians, and try hard not to want to jump through your screen to hug Louise Beavers as the oh-so-sweet Aunt Ophelia, offering homespun advice to her beloved Carroll, and dedicated to the family whose ancestors enslaved hers. The fact that these characters are more devoted to the ancestors of those who enslaved them than to their own people is really hard to swallow, but then again, so is a lot of history presented through Hollywood's eyes.
Helen Broderick gets some nice moments as MacMurray's spinster distant cousin, continuously courted by a determined neighbor. The presence of ditsy Marie Wilson only over-proves the fact that this film is lost in a time warp, certain elements of it that don't seem true to the late 1800's/early 1900's setting.