Director: Jean Renoir
Year Released: 1945
Rating: 3.5
A farmer (Zachary Scott) packs up his wife (Betty Field), two kids and mother (Beulah Bondi) and moves to a run-down shack to start his own farm, encountering countless logistical and human problems along the way. Though I expected this to be one of those pat-the-farmers-on-the-back-Go-America! pictures, it helps that Renoir (and, to a degree, William Faulkner) were involved, and instead of being a flag-waving tribute, is a rather even-tempered and open-minded depiction of the struggles of the poor trying to make their living off the land (and battling Mother Nature). There's a very telling conversation near the end between Scott and his factory worker Tim (Charles Kemper) in which the film spells out its ultimate message about harmony between those who work in the city and those who work on the farm and how both are necessary for modern living. Renoir, forever the humanist, even shows Scott and his grouchy neighbor more or less accepting each other after a fist-fight (and plenty of shenanigans): even the meanest and most stubborn among us can be reasoned with (... to a degree).
