In 1946 Georgia, Henry Warren (Michael Caine) is setting up a land deal to make himself richer and put his town on the map. To complete the deal, he just needs two landowners, Reeve Scott (Robert Hooks) and WW II veteran Rad McDowell (John Phillip Law) to sell their land to him. Neither one will sell. The rest of the film is about Warren's attempts to make them sell, and about how everyone in this economic backwater is affected by that and racism.
The main problem here is a rambling, diffuse script that attempts to fit a 900 page book into just over two hours. When Preminger first announced he would be filming this book, he said it would be a four hour film; the final cut was two hours and twenty minutes. Some performances have been noticeably cut; characters drop out of sight from the film without warning, plot threads are set up, then abruptly dropped. The performances are all over the map in terms of effectiveness.
However, Jane Fonda, as Julie Warren, is unexpectedly good as the Southern girl who grows up and finally sees what a louse she's married to. When angered, she oozes sarcasm overlaid with a dose of charm. Madeleine Sherwood, as Eula Purcell, the woman who won the social lottery when she snagged herself a judge to marry, is very funny as she tries to improve her social and financial position. Her best scene is when she throws a tantrum because her husband has jeopardized their daughters' wedding. Diahann Carroll, as the sharp-witted schoolteacher from the North, is very amusing as she puts on an subservient act to get access to land records. Robert Hooks and John Philip Law both put in solid performances.
The problematic part includes Michael Caine's involvement in all of this. He gets off to a dreadful start when in his first scene he sounds like he came from London with stops in Little Rock and Savannah; his accent is that bad in the beginning. He improves over the film, but he tends to overact all film long. As a sheriff, George Kennedy is effective in a part that has noticeably been edited. Burgess Meredith's role as Judge Purcell is so poisonously and obviously racist that I don't see how anyone could play it believably. Hugh Montenegro's musical score sounds more like contemporary 1960's music than anything that would take the viewer back to the 1940's.
The film is obvious and a plodding and ponderous effort at that, but is much better than its reputation as it was counted among the "50 Worst Films of All Time" in the 1978 book.
The main problem here is a rambling, diffuse script that attempts to fit a 900 page book into just over two hours. When Preminger first announced he would be filming this book, he said it would be a four hour film; the final cut was two hours and twenty minutes. Some performances have been noticeably cut; characters drop out of sight from the film without warning, plot threads are set up, then abruptly dropped. The performances are all over the map in terms of effectiveness.
However, Jane Fonda, as Julie Warren, is unexpectedly good as the Southern girl who grows up and finally sees what a louse she's married to. When angered, she oozes sarcasm overlaid with a dose of charm. Madeleine Sherwood, as Eula Purcell, the woman who won the social lottery when she snagged herself a judge to marry, is very funny as she tries to improve her social and financial position. Her best scene is when she throws a tantrum because her husband has jeopardized their daughters' wedding. Diahann Carroll, as the sharp-witted schoolteacher from the North, is very amusing as she puts on an subservient act to get access to land records. Robert Hooks and John Philip Law both put in solid performances.
The problematic part includes Michael Caine's involvement in all of this. He gets off to a dreadful start when in his first scene he sounds like he came from London with stops in Little Rock and Savannah; his accent is that bad in the beginning. He improves over the film, but he tends to overact all film long. As a sheriff, George Kennedy is effective in a part that has noticeably been edited. Burgess Meredith's role as Judge Purcell is so poisonously and obviously racist that I don't see how anyone could play it believably. Hugh Montenegro's musical score sounds more like contemporary 1960's music than anything that would take the viewer back to the 1940's.
The film is obvious and a plodding and ponderous effort at that, but is much better than its reputation as it was counted among the "50 Worst Films of All Time" in the 1978 book.