The Southerner (1945)

A family are quite literally tuckered out trying to farm for cotton when husband "Sam" (Zachary Scott) and his wife "Nona" (Betty Field) decide it's time to move with their two young children and start a life for themselves somewhere else. They alight on a rocky farmstead that centres on a ramshackle old house and decide that they are going to see if they can grow cotton there. Thing is, the terrain isn't ideal and their neighbour (J. Carrol Naish) is not the friendliest, so their travails are never going to be easy. Things are not helped when their young son "Jot" (Jay Gilpin) starts to suffer from the effects of malnutrition, and the doctor prescribes the ultimate in luxuries - a cow and some vegetables! Their work is all manual, they have none of the modern day tractors and seeding equipment and so, coupled with disease and a storm of almost biblical proportions, they don't have their problems to seek. Can they overcome these challenges, though? This is one of those stories about the human spirit. The couple are determined to face down the hardships and they get help and hindrance from those nearby as they struggle to fit into their new surroundings. It's probably Beulah Bondi's old "Granny' who steals the acting plaudits as she hitches up her skirts and rules the roost grumpily whilst the family wrestle with the rocks and the roof. Scott and Field gel quite well, too, as their work puts quite a strain on their family with no end in sight. It's perhaps his friend "Tim" (Charles Kemper) who best sums up their chosen lifestyle as something akin to: work yourself to the bone, year after year, then die! The production is quickly paced and effective at showing us just how tough subsistence farming was for the cotton picking population of hardy folks, and this has an authenticity to it that's worth a watch.