Review of Southern Films

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Edwin S. Porter, 1909) -- Slaves "know their place."  A distortion of Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist intent.  The novel was practically apologist in tone as it tried to make the slave-owning South sympathetic.  They knew they were doing wrong because a century before John Adams and other Founding Fathers were swearing off slavery.

The Battle (Biograph, 1911) -- D. W. Griffith glorifies slavery.

Coon Town Suffragettes (Sigmund Lubin, 1914) -- Mammies try to keep their husbands out of saloons.  The theme that "black men are no good" continues to the present day but now the evil is being done by feminists instead of racists in novels and films.

The Birth of a Nation (Epoch, 1915) -- Historically, during Reconstruction, ex-slaves searched for family members sold to other plantations, scrimped and saved, learned to read, bought land, started businesses, ran for office and, in general, just wanted to get on with their lives.  This outraged Southern whites who had spent centuries brainwashing themselves that Southern blacks were subhuman (the inspiration for Nazi extermination of Jews), unable to learn to read (So why the law forbidding blacks to read?), incapable of loving a parent/spouse/child (slave owners told themselves this as they broke up families and sold human beings), rapists of white women (while massa, his son & overseer raped little black slave girls which is why Afro-Americans are not as dark as Africans), and evil.   The reality was entire white towns holding 'picnics' to coon hunt and barbecue black men.  All over the South circulated photo postcards of lynchings -- and they call this Godforsaken region the Bible belt!  However, nothing  but nothing, came up to the rage that ku kluxers felt whenever they discovered a freed man who had managed to save two pennies from sharecropping, scraping, and skimping.  The myth was that lynching was about white women.  The reality was that blacks who saved their pennies had their businesses burned out and their bodies castrated and burned in the pre-Viagra era.

Which brings us to D. W. Grifith's travesty.  Like Leni Riefenstahl, Griffith pioneered many film techniques in the service of evil.  Thomas Dixon rewrote history in The Clansman to portray the first blacks elected in the South as corrupt and the first terrorist organization as heroes.  Griffith roped in Lillian Gish, Elmo Lincoln (obviously a descendant of Abraham), and even Erich von Stroheim to glorify slaveocrats, Confederates, and ku kluxers.  Even on its own terms, it portrayed vigilante injustice.  Did the Old South even have courts -- much less fair ones?  From 1500 to 1700, often the answer was no.  In the ante-bellum period, the sheriff and slave patrollers worked for the planters and not for the poor whites who were cannon fodder during Civil War while planters had substitutes and commutations.

Some people choose to view this film as a comedy.  It is not funny when two facts are recalled:

1. It was a KKK recruiting tool.

2. Whites left the theater, went out, and lynched blacks for fun.  Why do non-Southerners think that all Southern conservatives are mean, ignorant, and racist?  This film.  Why?  Because the assumption is made that Southerners are white.   All.

Hearts in Dixie (Paul Sloane, 1929) -- Stepin Fetchit perpetuates stereotypes and laughs all the way to the bank.

So Red the Rose (Paramount, 1935) -- It depicts slaves as contented and slave leaders as opportunists.

Show Boat (Universal, 1936) -- I admit it.  The Mississippi River begins in the north.

The Littlest Rebel (Twentieth-Century Fox, 1936) -- A tragedy in that Shirley Temple's character is fighting for slavery and insensitive to the freedom of Bill Robinson's character.

They Won't Forget (Warners, 1937) -- They forgot!  Adapted from the Graham Greene novel Deep in the Deep South.  It is an indictment of Southern values.  Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (MGM, 1939) -- There have been numerous adaptations of Samuel Clemens' novel.  This one features Mickey Rooney as the kid who loves using the N-word.

Gone With The Wind (Selznick, 1939) -- Before GWTW, production design didn't exist.

No real Southern parent would name their daughter Scarlett.  Why would you want your daughter known as 'a scarlet woman'?

Rhett Butler is practically challenged to a duel for saying that The South will lose a war with the north.  It takes a real man to tell the truth.

In GWTW, Big Sam and other Tara slaves are commandeered to dig latrines for Latané.  That's shovels, not guns; they are marching with when Scarlett encounters them on the Atlanta street before the siege.  Confederates were afraid to hand slaves guns lest they shoot massa and overseer (no matter what lies SCV and their Uncle Toms tell you).  Confederates were outraged at the sight of black soldiers and instead of imprisoning black POWs with white POWs, they either massacred them on sight as Nathan Bedford Forrest did at Fort Pillow or they sold them into slavery.  Uncle Toms existed as the rare exception that proves the rule that the vast majority of black soldiers fought on the Union side as USCT.  Robert Smalls and other black jacks fought in the Union Navy against the Confederate Navy.  And even in the case of the Uncle Toms, captured US Colored Troops not in uniform would tell Confederates that they were captured by Yankees, escaped, and were trying to get home to their plantation or their Massa.  Johnny Reb was often eager to believe his own propaganda that blacks loved slavery and would say "good nigga."

Selznick wanted to update The Birth of a Nation for his generation.  The Klan was disguised as a simple raid by a few men on a shanty town that housed poor starving whites and blacks.  Big Sam comes to Scarlett's rescue and is glad to go back to the plantation.

I like Gone With The Wind reluctantly.  GWTW does not grate on modern sensibilities like The Birth of a Nation does.  This is a measure of how much The South has grown.  As with The Birth of a Nation, there were lynchings in Atlanta at the time of the Atlanta premiere of GWTW.  Atlanta has grown too.  With the arrival of the Olympics, Atlanta did not want the whole world to see Confederate flags and took them down.  We as a region have far to go and we need to grow and progress.  In the future, I predict that GWTW will grate on our nerves the way that The Birth of a Nation does now.  Considering the tepid reception of Rhett Butler's People, perhaps that day is not too far.

In This Our Life (Warners, 1942) -- From the novel by Ellen Glasgow, this dignified portrayal features Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Billie Burke, and Hattie McDaniel.  [Editor's Note: Ms. McDaniel played a lot of maids during her career but she got onto the cast of several classic motion pictures.]

Dixie (Paramount, 1943) -- Biography of Daniel Emmett.

Song of the South (RKO & Disney, 1947) -- Uncle Remus perpetuates stereotypes.  Some people have boycotted Disney films ever since.

Stars in My Crown (MGM, 1950) -- A parson in a town after the Civil War.

Show Boat (1951) -- the remake

Member of the Wedding (Paramount, 1951) -- screen version of Carson McCullers' play

Good-bye, My Lady (Warner, 1956) -- Sharecroppers in the Louisiana bayous.  Before Denzel there was Billie Dee and before Billie Dee, there was Sidney.  Sidney is NOT the male lead.

The Long, Hot Summer (Jerry Wald, 1958) -- Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Angela Lansbury, Joanne Woodward, and Lee Remick star in this Faulkner adaptation.

Porgy and Bess (Columbia, 1959) -- Like other films trading in stereotypes, it could be dismissed but for the presence of Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey.

The Sound and the Fury (Jerry Wald, 1959) -- film version of the Faulkner novel

The Intruder (Roger Corman, 1961) -- A man arrives to arouse a town about school integration.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal, 1963) --  Gregory Peck.  Those two words alone leave a woman weak in the knees.  Harper Lee's bestseller is second only to Margaret Mitchell's in sales when it comes to Southern novels.

Cool Hand Luke (Warner, 1967) -- "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

In the Heat of the Night (Mirisch, 1967) -- A northern police detective is arrested in a southern town for being black.  Before DWB (driving-while-black), there used to be crimes called LWB (living-while-black) and BWB (breathing-while-black).  The fictional town of Sparta MS was played by Covington GA in the long-running TV series spawned by the film.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Warner & Seven Arts, 1968) -- based on the Carson McCullers novel

Slaves (Walter Reade, 1969) -- A drama about slavery with Ossie Davis and, believe it or not, Dionne Warwick.

The Reivers (Cinema Center Films, 1969) -- Steve McQueen stars in this movie based on the Faulkner novel.

Easy Rider (Columbia, 1969) -- Bikers are still very much with us and The South still has hippie communes and hippies despite mean rednecks who also are still with us.  While Peter Fonda keeps a low profile these days, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson have built big careers.

Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots (Warner, 1970) -- This is the film version of the Tennessee Williams play The Seven Descents of Myrtle.  Naturally it was shot on location in Baton Rouge LA.  Go figure.

Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . . (MGM, 1970) -- The aftermath of a bitter election campaign in the Deep South.  The release date tells you that it's not about Obama versus McCain.  A Southerner was recently (2009) beaten up in The South for wearing an Obama T-shirt.  So good news for those who feared that The South was finally learning to be magnanimous or civilized. [that's sarcasm folks]

Brother John (Columbia, 1971) -- Sidney Poitier stars in this film about a funeral.

Farewell Uncle Tom (Cannon, 1972) -- slavery

Sounder (Twentieth-Century Fox, 1972) -- A family during The First Great Depression.  Critically-acclaimed must-see film. [Editor's Note: It should be good preparation for The Second Great Depression.]

Book of Numbers (Avco Embassy, 1973) -- Southern life AND numbers running?  There's a combination you don't see often.

Conrack (Twentieth-Century Fox, 1974) -- This is based on the true story of a teacher on an isolated South Carolina island.

The Klansman (Paramount, 1974) -- Welcome to scenic Atoka County. Population 10,000. Cross burnings. Rape. Murder. Arson. It’s a great place to live...... if THEY let you.

Mandingo (Paramount, 1975) -- This movie unfairly raised hopes that all the Kyle Onstott/Lance Horner slavery-time novels would be made into films featuring vicious racism, X-rated interracial sex, full frontal nudity, purple prose, cringingly explicit violence, overdoses of injustice, and everything else that embarrasses the neo-Confederate apologists and historical revisionists.  But alas, sigh, 'twas not to be.

Drum (United Artists, 1976) -- reverts to old stereotypes and thereby scuttles the whole Onstott/Horner franchise.  Idiot producers.

Wise Blood (Anthea, 1979) -- Flannery O'Connor adaptation in which a poor Southerner becomes a preacher and starts his own church.

Norma Rae (20th Century-Fox, 1979) -- Yes, Virginia, there are unions in The South.  Health care was an issue then and it still is now.

Coal Miner's Daughter (Universal, 1980) -- The Loretta Lynn story.

A Soldier's Story (Columbia, 1984) -- White southerners had never seen a black military officer before World War Two. [Editor's Note: Black officers in predominantly white militaries date back to antiquity, before Christ.]

Places in the Heart (TriStar, 1984) -- A woman farmer faces a tornado and other obstacles to survival.

Cocoon (20th Century-Fox, 1985) -- Science fiction?  Set in the South?  Nobody gets killed?  High production values?  Directed by Opie?  It doesn’t get any better than this: that one-in-a-million film that is anti-death.  Do not go gently into that bad night.  Rage, rage.  Or in modern terms, don't walk toward the white light and the tunnel and all that other near death experience.

Crossroads (Columbia, 1986) -- a pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta by a blues musician.

Matewan (Cinecom, 1987) -- labor trouble in the coal mines of West Virginia during the 1920's

The Big Easy (Columbia, 1987) -- film noir set in New Orleans, 'Nollins, The Crescent City

School Daze (Columbia, 1988) -- That Yankee Spike Lee actually attended Morehouse College in Lanner, er, Atlanta.

Mississippi Burning (Orion, 1988) -- Supposedly about the civil rights movement, the film forgot to notice that blacks were somehow involved.

Driving Miss Daisy (Warner, 1989) -- seniors have fun too.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (Channel Four Films, 1991) -- Carson McCullers' tale of a triangle.

Fried Green Tomatoes (Universal, 1991) -- The Whistle Stop Cafe is based on the Irondale Cafe in Irondale AL located near a classification yard, which is hardly a whistle stop.  It was filmed in Juliette GA and the set was then renovated into a tourist district.  [Editor's Note: Though this site is intended for heterosexuals, we decided to include this film and a few others for the sake of completeness.]

The Firm (Paramount, 1993) -- John Grisham’s novel was filmed in Memphis among other places.

The Client (Warner, 1994) -- John Grisham again.  A TV spin-off lasted one season.

Forrest Gump (1994) -- The point of the motion picture may be that Gump is retarded (sorry, mentally challenged) but that still makes him smarter than all his fellow Southerners.  Haley Joel Osment is here in one of his first screen roles.  The cinematography is spectacular and The South looks great.  The greenness of The South as shown in Forrest Gump sears into my memory because I have been places that don't have Southern greenery and scarcely have trees.

A Time to Kill (Warner, 1996) -- John Grisham writes a happy ending.  In the real South, a racial incident would have devolved into Tulia TX or Rosewood FL.

Rosewood (Warner, 1997) -- Speaking of which, there is this dramatization about the 1923 massacre of a black community, a not too infrequent event in less enlightened times. [Editor's Note: In addition to Tulia TX and that truck dragging in Texas on Gov. Bush's watch, there have been actual lynchings in the 21st Century.]

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Warner, 1997) -- Speaking of evil, one of us here has lived in Savannah and must lead a very sheltered life because she has never seen transvestites and people walking invisible dogs.  Granted, there are nuts in every major city.  My God, we love Savannah here at "In Search of th' Old South" and will not even attempt to conceal that love.  It is true that despite the preservationists' best efforts a lot of old places have died under the metal treads of the bulldozer and the wrecking ball but there is still hope that the Lost Squares might be restored by archaeologists.  Maybe even the original walls of the city.  There should be a municipal ordinance that if you don't love Savannah and want to tear something old down, that you should be tossed into one of the nearby alligator-infested tidal wetlands.  One of us is old enough to remember that at night it was completely dark on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River approaching the city toward the Talmadge Bridge.  That luminal contrast burned itself into a child's mind.  Manhattan Island is not the same.  There is light pollution on both sides of New York City and Jersey City.  They should restore Hutchinson Island to pitch black dark.  A city is more than money.  Savannah is a state of mind.  [Editor's Note: I asked the reviewer.  Where's the review?  Response: Not enough Savannah in the movie.  Too much Hollywood.  So reviewed the city instead.  I love Savannah too.  Except when humidity reaches 100% in August.]

The Legend of Bagger Vance (Dreamworks, 2000) -- If Bagger Vance was alive today, he would let Fluffy carry his golf bag and take on Tiger Woods.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Touchstone, 2000) -- Based on Homer's The Odyssey.  That song, you know the one, never made number one on the charts but it won Union Station a lot of fans. There are lots of little gems to watch out for in the movie.  The Changing of the Guard at the Castle of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz is here changed into a Klan rally.  Even ku kluxers must have laughed till their ribs hurt over that scene.  Too bad Richard Pryor and the KKK never got together and wrote a comedy.  In Germany if you deny that The Holocaust happened, they throw you in jail where you belong.  The South will never, ever reach that level of adult maturity but at least we Southerners know how to laugh at ourselves.

Sunshine State (Columbia TriStar Sony Classics, 2002) -- Not a documentary about commercial real estate and offers little insight into the clear-cutting and paving-over of The South but it is a pleasant little art house film.  Some have said that the older black community in the film is based on the real life American Beach.  Instead of poor blacks pushed out by white gentrification, it was more a matter of middle-class blacks being crowded out by working class whites.  That's the back story; the film itself is pretty upbeat.

Cold Mountain (Miramax, 2003) -- Speaking of art house films, Miramax did this non-art house film about a Confederate deserter walking for months to return to Monroe NC.  Or rather Ada Monroe in North Carolina.  Set in North Carolina but filmed in Romania.  That's okay because I'm sure some Romanian films have been shot in North Carolina.

The Notebook (New Line, 2004) -- Although somewhere on this planet there exist women who are not romance fans (me for instance), if you are a romance fan, The Notebook is a must see. [Editor's Note: There is a sequel too.]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount, 2008) -- Once again, black folks got to raise white folks' children but the little rascal in this movie is not Steve Martin in The Jerk.  This party was thrown by The Great Gatsby himself, F. Scott Fitzgerald.