A King Vidor Metro production, but it sure smells like 20th Century Fox, with its rural setting, leisurely pacing, and prosaic dialog--it's even based on a novel by, and co-screenwritten by, Phil Stong, who wrote 20th's "State Fair." Lionel Barrymore, wearing a fake beard that wouldn't fool an eight-year-old, is the patriarch of a successful Iowa farm, a Civil War vet (just barely--at 85, he'd have been 17 in 1865) saddled with a troublesome family he lives with, including a wonderful Beulah Bondi, as a calculating shrew. Granddaughter Miriam Hopkins, a divorcée, comes to visit from New York and falls in love with both the farm and married neighbor Franchot Tone, while hired hand Stu Erwin drinks and provides the modest comic relief. The writing's less than first-rate- -scenes just end, and there's more detail to the workings of farm life than necessary--but it's a quiet, touching character study, and Hopkins, often given to histrionics elsewhere, is restrained and appealing. The characters' dilemmas feel real, and the bittersweet ending resonates.
Review of The Stranger's Return
