God's Little Acre

Is there any way to review God's Little Acre (1958) without using profanity? Probably not, but I'll give it a try.

Anthony Mann adapts Erskine Caldwell's controversial novel of Southern perversity and hopelessness, and the result isn't pretty. I've never read the novel, so it's possible that something profound was lost (badly) in translation, but Mann completely botches the adaptation, creating a movie that's atrocious on every conceivable level.

Ty Ty Walden (Robert Ryan) is a Georgia sharecropper who's devoted to finding a hidden cache of gold on his property. His single-minded, seemingly-endless quest makes him largely oblivious to his family's soap opera entanglements: daughter Rosamund's (Helen Westcott) marriage to Will Thompson (Aldo Ray), a union organizer, is faltering as Will sleeps with Griselda (Tina Louise). Local hick Pluto (Buddy Hackett) wants to run for Sheriff, and also desire's Ty Ty's hot-house tomato daughter, Darlin' Jill (Fay Spain). Throw in another son (Jack Lord), a union riot, heavy-handed religious imagery and an albino (Michael Landon) with dowsing powers and you've got one heck of a Gothic freakshow.

The overwrought, Southern-fried melodrama of God's Little Acre makes Peyton Place look like Brief Encounter. This is one of the most hideously-caricatured depictions of Southern life outside of The Chase, where everyone is stark raving mad, rock-stupid or sexually repressed. Wallowing with poor (if pretty) white trash is a guilty pleasure for some, and can even be art in the hands of Tennessee Williams or William Faulkner, but I reckon only masochists would draw pleasure from this film. It's watching unpleasant people do weird and pointless things for two hours, and I'd rather spend the time cutting my toenails or regrouting the bathroom.

God's Little Acre goes out of its way to fail. Scenes go on long after the point's sunk in, generating no tension or interest, merely incredulity or boredom. "Colorful" characters are given stupid dog names (Ty Ty, Pluto, Griselda?) and defined in the crudest possible terms: Ty Ty wants gold, the girls want sex, the Sheriff wants elected, Will wants justice. Skull-crushingly obvious "symbolism" (Ty Ty carting around a cross, the albino) makes things more obnoxious. The one area where Mann might be expected to excell - Will's battle with the mill-owner - comes off as rushed and perfunctory. This subplot is secondary to the beef-cake and bosom-heaving, and frankly Mann doesn't seem to know what he's doing. The racy content and "leftist" elements might have been controversial in 1958, but they seem laughably overripe at fifty years' distance.

Anthony Mann is still Anthony Mann, so the movie's not bad to look at. Ernest Haller has some nice black-and-white photography that perfectly emphasizes the seediness of the characters and setting, perhaps to an excessive degree. The movie crawls at a snail's pace, never generating more than momentary interest, with poorly-written, badly-acted scenes that drag on like a particularly-hormonal high school play. Elmer Bernstein's jazzy, upbeat score is completely wrong for the film.

Robert Ryan is one of this blog's favorite actors, but even he comes off badly. Given a poorly-written character who's obsession is taken for granted, never explained, Ryan compensates by chewing scenery and putting on the phoniest Southern accent in film history. It isn't pretty to see such a great actor reduced to spittle-flecked, corn-pone hamming.

The supporting cast is no better. Buddy Hackett (The Love Bug) is punchably obnoxious as a politically-ambitious hick. Tina Louise (Gilligan's Island) and Fay Spain (Al Capone) look great but their characters are as shallow as a kiddie pool. Aldo Ray's (Men in War) comes off as a suicidal twat rather than a force of righteous anger, and Jack Lord (Man of the West) is a non-entity. The rest of the cast just plain sucks.

God's Little Acre is an unbelievably bad film. Like, "fifty worst movies of all time" list bad. The fact that it's from the director of The Man from Laramie and Reign of Terror make it all the more inexplicable.