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Tobacco Road (1941)

Director: John Ford

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Ford's next film but one after The Grapes of Wrath, obviously intended by Fox as a follow-up in the Oscar-winning social conscience stakes, was generally castigated as a crude, stagy mockery, derived at one or two censorship removes from the play based on Erskine Caldwell's bawdily earthy novel. In retrospect, however, it emerges as a fascinatingly subversive piece, undermining the starry-eyed humanism of the earlier film's 'We are the people' view. Instead of Steinbeck's Joads of Oklahoma, stubbornly maintaining their faith in the American Dream even in the depths of misery, we get the Lesters of Georgia, poor white trash perfectly content to wallow fecklessly in their mire of animal sexuality (when young) or tranquil sloth (when old age takes over). Beautifully realised by Ford, not unlike Kazan's Baby Doll in its blackly comic blend of dark sexuality and overheated melodrama, Tobacco Road is often very funny, sometimes deeply moving, and always provocative in its acknowledgment of an alternative to 'the American way of life'.

Author: TM 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

  • gatling said...
    Posted on Feb 03 2008 22:56 I thought the movie to be very provocative and funny, yet bothersome. the dude character bugged the hell out of me and the sister bessie was a slut, like most the woman portrayed in movie. the guys were just a slutty. so I am not sure what I was to take out of this movie other than a feeling of remorse for watching it.
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Cast & crew

Director: John Ford

Producer: Darryl F Zanuck

Cast: Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson, Dana Andrews, Ward Bond, Zeffie Tilbury, Russell Simpson full cast

Duration: 84 mins


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