The Shepherd of the Hills - 1941
Posted: July 14th, 2008, 10:16 am
(I have to take advantage of ChiO's vacation absence to post as much as possible on John Wayne and John Ford! )
The number of genuine pearls I keep discovering in the career of (blessedly un-auteurish) director Henry Hathaway
(starting in 1925 as an Assistant Director and working until 1974) makes me wonder why
he's seldom critically discussed. Admiration continues for films like Lives of a Bengal
Lancer, Peter Ibbetson, Kiss of Death, Fourteen Hours, Rawhide, Garden of Evil and
Niagara but it's as if people are suprised when they see who's named their director.
After Peter Ibbetson, I think The Shepherd of the Hills is one movie that should
inspire a second look. It is a darkly beautiful and pungeant realization of the best selling novel
about Ozark Mountain people by Harold Bell Wright. Lushly photographed by Harold Green
and Charles Lang in russets and greens (Technicolor), it is rich in shadow and dappled light
and perfectly complemented by a very unobtrusive score, by Gerard Carbonara, which is
keyed to Brahms lullaby.
It is curious to me why this movie is virtually ignored whenever John Wayne's best
films are listed because it's unquestionably his best performance and film since 1939's
Stagecoach. Personally, I am moving The Shepherd of the Hills into his top five.
At times, you feel like this could be a John Ford movie, which just goes to prove he
wasn't the only director who could exhibit a feel for backwoods folk (Clarence
Brown's limpid The Yearling being another example) that is honest and free
from condescension.
What an extraordinary cast Hathaway had to work with, it must have made it easy to
create something special with the likes of Beulah Bondi in her most atypical role until de Toth's
Track of the Cat in 1954. If you had to face off those two Bondi characters, I couldn't say
which would be the winner, they are both poisonous and twisted with hate that fills the
atmosphere. Just why "Aunt Mollie" is so filled with the devil is never explicitly explained,
though one scene seems to imply a jealousy toward the sister abandoned by her husband and
whose son, John Wayne, has been raised by Mollie to kill his father if he ever finds him. Matriarch
of a brood of shiftless moonshiners, Bondi's "Mollie" has made pariahs of the whole Matthews
clan including her shell of a husband (James Barton) who knows her evil ways but is impotent to
stop her; and shaggy Ward Bond as "Wash" (who appears decidedly comfortable in his role
as worst of the lot).
The only two creatures not entirely without loving ways are Matt (John Wayne) and Mollie's youngest
son Pete, rendered mute by an accident. The speechless "Pete," in a remarkable performance
by Marc Lawrence (who will be familiar to fans of gangster and film noir) and the blind elderly
neighbor, "Granny Becky" (Marjorie Maine) will ultimately be the only locals who comprehend
the truth behind Mollie's bad ways. Granny will "see" it and Pete will communicate it.
When a stranger comes to the hills, young "Sammy" (Betty Field) who loves Matt thinks
there may be hope for healing and a return to peace in their community. The newcomer manages
to heal the sick and bring sight to the blind (indirectly, by paying to have Granny Becky's eyes
operated upon) and befriending young Pete and Matt in a fatherly way. But the stranger brings
a secret---and in the hands of the matchless Harry Carey, he assumes an almost
redemptive character---a secret that connects him to the Matthews clan and compels him to buy
the land where the grave of Matt's mother, Sarah, lies.
The truth will out and along with the healing and return of hope there also comes
the reckoning between Matt and his past. Without giving away any more of the plot, I
encourage everyone who can to see for themselves this rich tapestry Hathaway weaved
and perhaps reevaluate his place among directors---for the sake of exceptional gems like this one.
(If you want to see some screencaps from Shepherd of the Hills, I posted them here:
http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.j ... 3&tstart=0 )
The number of genuine pearls I keep discovering in the career of (blessedly un-auteurish) director Henry Hathaway
(starting in 1925 as an Assistant Director and working until 1974) makes me wonder why
he's seldom critically discussed. Admiration continues for films like Lives of a Bengal
Lancer, Peter Ibbetson, Kiss of Death, Fourteen Hours, Rawhide, Garden of Evil and
Niagara but it's as if people are suprised when they see who's named their director.
After Peter Ibbetson, I think The Shepherd of the Hills is one movie that should
inspire a second look. It is a darkly beautiful and pungeant realization of the best selling novel
about Ozark Mountain people by Harold Bell Wright. Lushly photographed by Harold Green
and Charles Lang in russets and greens (Technicolor), it is rich in shadow and dappled light
and perfectly complemented by a very unobtrusive score, by Gerard Carbonara, which is
keyed to Brahms lullaby.
It is curious to me why this movie is virtually ignored whenever John Wayne's best
films are listed because it's unquestionably his best performance and film since 1939's
Stagecoach. Personally, I am moving The Shepherd of the Hills into his top five.
At times, you feel like this could be a John Ford movie, which just goes to prove he
wasn't the only director who could exhibit a feel for backwoods folk (Clarence
Brown's limpid The Yearling being another example) that is honest and free
from condescension.
What an extraordinary cast Hathaway had to work with, it must have made it easy to
create something special with the likes of Beulah Bondi in her most atypical role until de Toth's
Track of the Cat in 1954. If you had to face off those two Bondi characters, I couldn't say
which would be the winner, they are both poisonous and twisted with hate that fills the
atmosphere. Just why "Aunt Mollie" is so filled with the devil is never explicitly explained,
though one scene seems to imply a jealousy toward the sister abandoned by her husband and
whose son, John Wayne, has been raised by Mollie to kill his father if he ever finds him. Matriarch
of a brood of shiftless moonshiners, Bondi's "Mollie" has made pariahs of the whole Matthews
clan including her shell of a husband (James Barton) who knows her evil ways but is impotent to
stop her; and shaggy Ward Bond as "Wash" (who appears decidedly comfortable in his role
as worst of the lot).
The only two creatures not entirely without loving ways are Matt (John Wayne) and Mollie's youngest
son Pete, rendered mute by an accident. The speechless "Pete," in a remarkable performance
by Marc Lawrence (who will be familiar to fans of gangster and film noir) and the blind elderly
neighbor, "Granny Becky" (Marjorie Maine) will ultimately be the only locals who comprehend
the truth behind Mollie's bad ways. Granny will "see" it and Pete will communicate it.
When a stranger comes to the hills, young "Sammy" (Betty Field) who loves Matt thinks
there may be hope for healing and a return to peace in their community. The newcomer manages
to heal the sick and bring sight to the blind (indirectly, by paying to have Granny Becky's eyes
operated upon) and befriending young Pete and Matt in a fatherly way. But the stranger brings
a secret---and in the hands of the matchless Harry Carey, he assumes an almost
redemptive character---a secret that connects him to the Matthews clan and compels him to buy
the land where the grave of Matt's mother, Sarah, lies.
The truth will out and along with the healing and return of hope there also comes
the reckoning between Matt and his past. Without giving away any more of the plot, I
encourage everyone who can to see for themselves this rich tapestry Hathaway weaved
and perhaps reevaluate his place among directors---for the sake of exceptional gems like this one.
(If you want to see some screencaps from Shepherd of the Hills, I posted them here:
http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.j ... 3&tstart=0 )