Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★½

  Frances Farmer will have Her Revenge on Edward Arnold.

  Well, not really, but close enough. It starts like a Howard Hawks film, then slowly turns into a William Wyler Edna Ferber adaptation, with a sidetrack into Vertigo territory. Like Ferber's Giant and Showboat, it's a multi-generational story, where the younger generation pays the price for the mistakes of the older. In this case, it's Arnold's lumber baron who gives up saloon girl Farmer for the boss's daughter, making his fortune but costing him his soul. Farmer, stunningly gorgeous, with a haunted innocence and a deeper-than-Dietrich singing voice, makes for one of the better incarnations of the Hawksian woman. Hawks himself noted that she was one of the three best actresses…

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  Review by Vadim Rizov ★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  There's a really staggering montage of the logging process that's both an impressive, uncharacteristic moment of sheer spectacle (I haven't seen this much timber flowing down rapid rivers since Teuvo Tulio's The Song Of The Scarlet Flower) and Hawks again indulging a penchant for documentary footage grounding otherwise loose-limbed protagonists. In outline this is another one of those endless Edna Ferber sagas covering 30 years and two generations of some epic soap opera shit (can't say the woman didn't know what she liked), but Hawks cuts out the middle entirely and sticks to two compressed time periods, which helps. Gets really interesting when Frances Farmer's character dies and the actress returns as her own daughter, whom Edward Arnold immediately develops…

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  Review by Matthew Noble ★★★ 4

  Hawks-athon #16/39

  A movie about loggers set around the turn of the century. Our lead logger marries for money, despite being in love with another woman, and decades later starts to fall for her daughter. Already you can tell there are shades of Obsession and Vertigo in here, not to mention The Age of Innocence, so conceptually I found this movie fascinating. I didn't actually enjoy the experience very much though, purely because the main character is insufferably and unrepentantly selfish. Who knows, maybe if there was more conflict behind his motivations, I might've sympathised with him.

  Also, needed more Joel McCrea. Much more.

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  Review by nora ★★½

  much of this film is pointlessly tedious, but i loved the final few moments which really pack the emotional punch that so much of this film lacks. i know that william wyler pretty much disowned this film since he only directed the final third, nevertheless i want to thank him for that scene where joel mccrea and frances farmer pull taffy because it's so cute.

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  Review by Owen ★★★½ 2

  Edward Arnold's lumber baron falls for Frances Farmer before giving her up for the safe social option only to fall for her daughter two decades later. Joel McCrea is in there as his son who also has a thing for the younger farmer and Walter Brennan goes full on swedish chef as Arnold's old crony who gets his cast offs.

  The logging sections here join the pyramid building in Land of the Pharaohs and the Fisheries in Tiger Shark on the list of Howard Hawks films whose best moments are the semi documentary depictions of manly work. I mean he always liked that kind of thing but in these three it really is the highlight (and is very dynamic and…

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  Review by Madelyn M. ★★½

  How do you have William Wyler and Howard Hawks on the same movie and still manage to make it boring

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  Review by Joe ★★★★

  Orphan Hawks -- he was fired or quit depending on who you ask and the film was to one degree or another retooled and completed without him -- but I found it way, way more compelling than I ever would have guessed a multigenerational logging drama could ever be. You can sense it slip out of Hawks mode and into a more traditional dramatic register in the last third or so, but it finishes strong and the cast is superb. You just cannot beat Walter Brennan, can you?

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  Review by Scott Kelly ★★★½ 3

  My first exposure to actress Frances Farmer, and by all accounts this is her best film and contains her best performance. The then 22 year old Farmer is outstanding in a dual role playing both Lotta, a lumber town saloon singer, and her luminous seemingly innocent daughter of the same name. It's easy to see why director Howard Hawks asserted that Farmer was the best actress he ever worked with. The plot, taken from an Edna Ferber novel, involves a larger than life timber baron named Barney Glasgow (Edward Arnold) who falls in love with both the mother and the daughter. As with other films based on Ferber novels there is a significant focus on the concerns of the strong…

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  Review by Euan Harris ★★★

  Normally the names Howard Hawks and William Wyler before any film are enough to put you in good stead, let alone both of them together. And yet, strangely, that isn't the case here. Instead you get a film with a messy production history, and a wonderful example of a time in Hollywood when the producer, not the director, was the main driving force behind a film. While Samuel Goldwyn was away for a time in hospital, Hawks took it upon himself to take over, and began to change the tone of the film and increase the budget. Unhappy with the direction Hawks was taking the film upon his return, Goldwyn fired him and forced Wyler to reluctantly finish it in…

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  Review by hellohildy ★★★★½

  Great movie. Edward Arnold, Frances Farmer, Walter Brennan... all amazing. Howard Hawks lettin' 'er rip, directs the hell out of the first 2/3s -ish of the film. William Wyler did a serviceable job with the rest of it. I'm looking forward to watching this one again.

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  Review by russman ★★★ 2

  En Vogue thinks otherwise

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  Review by Ruth Scouller ★★★½

  Howard Hawks was famously booted from this Goldwyn production, and you can definitely see what might've drew him to this during the Iron Ridge first half, before we make way for a replacement Wyler second half (reprising the gothic filial rivalry over the same girl seen in A House Divided) and more customarily populated by a grab-bag of dramatic female roles. But let's not forget Richard Rosson, who directs the industrial logging sequence, arguably the showstopping highlight to be found here. It's just cool to have a film with Hawks, Wyler, Toland and Mate all attached. Wyler also directed three films that got above-the-line Oscar nominations that year; I doubt many have topped that.

  Edward Arnold is cast to type,…