The Trail of The Lonesome Pine

[movieman1957]

As Klondike expressed an interest in this film maybe this would be a good one for here too. (We already started a chat at TCM. Though not a true western we thought it a logical place to put it.)
I had a post that followed Miss G's comments and maybe she'll copy hers too. I can't say it is much of a review but some thoughts on it. Hopefully, Wendy will share hers after she has seen it. (Klondike, you jump in as well, please.)

We recently had a discussion about "The Shepherd of The Hills" and kind of used it as a starting point to this film. Both are directed by Henry Hathaway and both have Beulah Bondi and a similar location and time setting. That is where it ends though.

The basic plot of the film is that Fred MacMurray comes to this small Appalachian community to start a coal mining operation and must deal with two families who have been involved in a long family feud. Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney play a young couple with plans that can change with them caught between MacMurray, the feud and changes in Sydney when she "goes to town."


"I just finished watching this film. Aside from the setting and the color pretty much any comparison with "Shepherd of The Hills" goes out the window.

"Who can't love Beulah Bondi. Her name, Melissa, is seemingly out of character for this time and location. This is not unlike Melissa herself. She is no beauty but she has a beautiful heart and all this family strife is just killing her. She is sweet, caring and wants everything to be right for everyone. I love it when she says "I was born old." (One of our favorite movies uses that line too.) She is a joy to watch and as much a contrast as "Ma" in "Shepherd" as one can be. She is a saint.

"I agree that this doesn't have the depth of "Shepherd" but it does have its own emotional impact. Sydney is good though one may argue her transformation may be a bit sudden. (Count me there but it is not a huge distraction.) A fine cast. MacMurray is quite good as he walks the line between friend of the family and loving Sydney while not alienating Fonda.

"How one family can weather the sorrow seems more than impossible and the film, maybe rightly so, doesn't try to answer it. You just know they are past the darkness of the feud and maybe those that died will not have died in vain."

It's a lovely looking film (Color) with some good hearted family time. It contrasts well with the sorrow of the last act.
More later after some others have chimed in.

[JackFavell]

I hope to get through this one by tomorrow... I couldn't quite make it last night.

Two thoughts - Fred MacMurray is a likable but callow fellow, and Henry Fonda is really great as MacMurray's polar opposite - a boy-man who feels things all too much.

Sylvia Sidney is adorable here, but whoever said she is no Betty Field is right. The best scenes so far are the ones between Bondi and Fonda, but what did you expect?

It took me ten minutes of staring to figure out that Toliver is actually Alice Adams' dad. He's super here.

I guess that was three thoughts.

The movie is just plain gorgeous, and Hathaway's ability to make the landscape really emotional never fails to impress me. I like his mirror shots of the lake or river.

oops. four...

[JackFavell]

SPANKY SPOILERS

Oh, Spanky..... Spanky......

I knew the minute he was introduced that he was a goner. Why did Spanky get into that "dang contraption"? oh, WHY did they have to do it? snif. If he was annoying Mickey Rooney, he would have lived.

I love 'panky.

I liked TOTLP..... no wait. I was irritated at TOTLP. It was a very confusing movie to me. It seemed all over the place. And yet, there were moments of great beauty, and moments that I really loved.

I felt that TOTLP walked a fine line, never coming down to a real viewpoint. Is the desecration of the woods any different from the Falin's burning the camp down? I guess I was expecting some kind of epiphany on Fred MacMurray's part - about the work he was doing, and the land - that the land itself and the kindness of the people would change him. But then, I forget that this was 1936, the height of the WPA.... I guess I was expecting the same spirit that filled Shepherd of the Hills to be here, and it was lacking. I wanted someone to stand up for the good things of the country, while also saying that progress with a heart and an eye is a good thing, but this movie was not about that. Wild River is a great example, MissG, and a movie that I feel hit all the right notes in dealing with the exact same subject.

I liked Fred MacMurray - especially the epiphany he did have after...... after the tragedy.....he was callow, but you knew he had a good heart, watching over Spanky and I liked his slow falling in love with Sydney...... he played this role with a lot of gusto, and I enjoyed his light touch at the beginning - it was a great contrast to the slow, rather heavy "country" acting of the rest of the cast.

I literally did not recognize Nigel Bruce - he was great here, actually playing a totally different character!

I especially liked the Falin father - Robert Barrat, he was wonderful at showing the change and remorse of a man caught up in events he has lost control of.

I noticed the Cathy from Wuthering Heights-like fit that Sylvia Sydney threw... I thought her especially fine during that scene. I did not like her character though, and was disappointed when she turned to Fonda to solve things at the end. Sydney did extremely well with a character I thought was shallow and selfish. I hate to say I felt just like FrankGrimes did about Cathy in WH. But Sydney really salvaged my liking of that character. She added a lot of charm to her role. Even when I didn't like what she was doing, she made me see that June was just a girl, with thoughtless feelings and emotions she couldn't control any more than the men in her family could theirs.

I loved Henry Fonda, he was like a cut that won't heal because it is in the wrong place, at the tip of the finger where it keeps getting opened up. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and I very much liked the hint of anger in his love. He really did see the invasiveness of the so called "progress", and that is a point in his favor. He was a great mix of foolish backwoods suspicion, and something strong and powerful - pride in his country roots. Though he seems just the tiniest bit broad and stagey at certain points, I found him to be very strong as an actor, and his scenes ((especially with Bondi) are the best in the movie. In a way, he was changed for the better by that "progress" that he encountered. His character stands out for me, because he seemed not of one thing or another, walking between the new world and the old world, between tradition and progress, just as he walked between the two families to end the feud. He steps away from his old world ways in order to bring peace to his country, and for that, he is rewarded with a gun shot, as all Hollywood angels must be. He could never have gone back to the way things were anyway, once the peace was made, his girl gone....He would have ended up lost, maybe a little like Tom Joad, forced to wander between worlds forever. Fonda is about the only actor who can do such a role justice.

The fact that the movie leaves a lot of unanswered questions about tradition as opposed to progress could be a point in it's favor. I thought a lot while watching it, but I am not sure I like that. I could have done without at least one of the fist fights, I thought that was overkill. The bottom line for me was, I really wanted to fall deeply into this film, like SOTH, but couldn't, and that was terribly diasappointing.

The movie back and forthed way too much for me to really enjoy the complications. They seemed contrived, and that is my biggest complaint with the film. The events did not flow one after another like the water through the mill (a fine symbol - I wish they had used it more).

At one point, I thought the movie was going to talk about the money - how the money ruined the family. But aside from Henry Fonda's beautiful speech (I thought it was the best of the film), it just didn't stick with that theme either. There were so many red herrings as to the plot, that I simply couldn't enjoy the film. Maybe it is a film that gets better after you have seen it once... so you can enjoy it for what it IS.

Again, I should have loved the music, and the way it flowed through the movie, dealing with the emotions of the main characters, but I somehow felt a little played, and the guy singing became annoying to me. Perhaps it was just my mood. I did see this movie a very long time ago, and hated it. Now I see a lot of virtue in it, but I was very disappointed with the end product.

[feaito]

I saw this film in October 2009 -thanks to Ollie's generosity, no TCM USA here you know- last year and also loved it, here I'm copying my views from then:

Today I watched the breathtakingly beautiful outdoors Paramount film in glorious Technicolor "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1936) and I was blown away by its beauty, charm, simplicity and great, moving performances -most of all by those of Beulah Bondi, Spanky McFarland, Fred Stone and Henry Fonda-. There's a feud, two families of hillbilies in opposite sides who hate each other and a cultured engineer who arrives to the woods looking for coal (Fred Mac Murray). Sylvia Sidney (impersonating the daughter of one of the heads of the quarreling families) falls for the young engineer to the chagrin of her enamoured cousin (Fonda).

The outdoor location shots are amazingly beautiful and the print is crisp, sharp and full of vibrant, but not fake, colors. Henry Hathaway does a very fine job and the film captured me and moved me immensely -specially Spanky McFarland's character, who resembles a nephew of mine -but I won't tell more.

Nigel Bruce is also in the cast as MacMurray's British colleague. Not a dull film as I had read somewhere, but a rich, human, first rate drama.

[MissGoddess]

Oh, man, I had a whole long write up and this wonky internet
browser lost everything. It's all at TCM in the Western Rambles thread if
anyone is interested.

Suffice it to say, I agree with what Jackie and Chris wrote. It's
a beautiful film that is a nice bookend with Shepherd of the HIlls,
but without the latter film's well developed themes. Also, TOLP
does paint a rosier picture of "progress" and the coming of the
trains and mining to the little community. But I loved the story
anyway, and all the actors were marvelous. Poor Spanky.

[feaito]

Oh, man, I had a whole long write up and this wonky internet
browser lost everything. It's all at TCM in the Western Rambles thread if
anyone is interested.

Sorry to hear that April. I wished you had your views written in the Western threads at SSO -it's always a pleasure to read your posts. TCM Boards are definitely un-existent for me now, I tried to post over there last year but I did not feel comfortable, it's not what it used to be and I made my up mind then to post only at SSO. I used to love that place in between 2003-2006, though.

[MissGoddess]

Hi Feo,
I completely understand...no explanations for NOT posting at TCM are necessary
because its resident "evils" are well understood. I must be bi-polar to keep
posting there.

P.S. I only have this issue with losing my posts when I use Internet Explorer (my
only option at work).

[feaito]

Hi "la belle April",

The camera loves you baby! You are not bi-polar at all my pal, maybe I'm too drastic.

On the other hand, Internet explorer is the only option for me either at home or at work... An yes, sometimes I also loathe it..

[MikeBSG]

I don't think the movie "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" is all over the place. That is because I live in Big Stone Gap, Virginia where much of the action of the novel takes place and there is an outdoor drama, "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" that is performed each summer.

If you want to see a drama that is all over the place, come to BSG and see "Trail of the Lonesome Pine," because the outdoor drama tries to cram in all sorts of local history to the extent that June Tolliver's love story gets forgotten for a while. I have never read the original novel.

Perhaps what makes the movie difficult for me (and for a lot of viewers) is that while it is in color, it is actually a pre-Pearl Harbor movie. It was made during a pacifist time in American history, thus the emphasis is on ending the feud instead of punishing the wicked. Thus Henry Fonda's character lies about who fatally shot him, to "give peace a chance" to use a phrase of a later vintage. I keep wanting MacMurray and Fonda to blow away the bad guys and the ending is a bit of a let down. (In the outdoor drama, the Fonda character ends up moving to California, which is even more dramatically disappointing, even if historically proper.)

But no disagreement on who gives the best performance in the film. It is Henry Fonda. Was this the film that started him on the way to stardom?

[JackFavell]

Hi, Mike! It's good to know what BSG stands for! You are so lucky to live in such a beautiful place, with an annual play to commemorate it.

I think Fonda was pretty successful in his first role in The Farmer Takes a Wife, reprising his stage role but with Janet Gaynor in the lead. I imagine this film made a good first impression on movie goers of the time, and Gaynor and Fonda seem like a great match. I haven't seen it.

I Dream Too Much with Lily Pons is not really his film, and I think that he and Pons make a rather improbable couple. Still, there is a charm about it if you don't mind the mismatch. It certainly didn't destroy his career.

I think Way Down East was supposed to be another Farmer Takes a Wife, or a follow up. It has almost the same cast. It was out of style when D.W. Griffith made it years before, and I suspect it was not a big hit, either people were comparing it to the Gish version or it was hopelessly dated and folks did not go to see it.

I am pretty sure that Trail of the Lonesome Pine was instrumental in Fonda's career. He really shines as the face and voice of simple Americans, and I imagine Depression era audiences really responded strongly to "Dave" and his very American viewpoints (i.e. country values, distrust of money, etc.). Fonda is very strong but down to earth, two characteristics that would mark leading men of the thirties, as opposed to those of the twenties.

I don't know if he would have sunk as an actor had he not hit on all cylinders in TOTLP, but he might not have made it into any other significant roles like You Only Live Once, at least for a while. He probably would have continued on in screwball comedies, or as a shoulder for romantic leading ladies to cry on, or as an advertisement for Technicolor. I doubt he would have been taken as seriously.

[MissGoddess]

The Farmer Takes a Wife is rather charming. I was pleased by it.