Turn-of-the-last-century Rural Americana usually brought out the best in underappreciated studio stalwart Henry King, a director whose quiet, solid craftsmanship really puts across this episodic charmer. Taken from a fact-inspired novel about the new wife of a back-country North Georgia Methodist minister in the 1910s, Lamar Trotti’s tidy script (a bit too tidy) moves in discrete chapters, offering Preacher, Wife & Parishioners moral tests handling medical crises, romantic confidences, religious conviction & personal courage o’er the course of a year. It’s the sort of thing that can grow awful sticky, awful fast, but doesn’t under King who keeps from pushing emotional buttons or material too hard, balancing sentiment against tragedies real & perceived and earning his effects. Beautifully observed, if idealized, with some fine location shooting & a game cast, including Preacher & Wife/William Lundigan & Susan Hayward, natural & naturally sexy as the young newlyweds. FOX Cinema Archives’ DVD could use an upgrade, but it gets the qualities (and quality) across.
DOUBLE-BILL: D. W. Griffith cinematographer Karl Brown moved into directing with his silent Hill Country melodrama STARK LOVE/’27, shot in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, about people who might have come out of this story.
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