Synopsis
Drama of Searing Conflict...Bitterly Waged in One Small Corner of the World...
The insidious typical talk of a small town makes a young man and the married woman he is in love very unhappy.
1935 Directed by John Cromwell
The insidious typical talk of a small town makes a young man and the married woman he is in love very unhappy.
A sort-of Western set in the modern day, just as The Crucified Lovers is a sort-of jidai-geki set in the modern day. Like Mizoguchi, Cromwell disregards physical grace when a clunky gesture fits the situation better. Unlike Mizoguchi, he achieves it with such a down-the-line silent-era decoupage. An early moment between the to-be-lovers: Randolph Scott slips on a ladder and sends a hammer through the wall, but the tumble is telegraphed many times over through insert shots, such that we see the actual movement as if in slow motion. Something like an emotional slow motion, where the gesture stays true to an objective view of the situation while also representing the heightened relationship between the two. The same sort of…
A rare screening of one of John Cromwell’s least seen features—and, according to film historian William K. Everson and Cromwell himself, one of his best. A melodrama set in a small town in Iowa, full of intrigues and multiple subplots and revolving around a love triangle that leads to a feud between the two landowners involved, the film reportedly bears some relationship to PEYTON PLACE in its realistic critique of provincial attitudes and behavior. Randolph Scott stars; adapted by Allan Scott from a novel by Phil Strong, and shot by Nicholas Musuraca (1935).