With the conspicuous exception of Jane Wyman, who acts as if she wandered in from a better, subtler film set in the South and centered around a pet, ("Sounder" perhaps?), we're deep in the Hokey Swamps with this inspirational tear jerker from the always tasteful (read slow moving and dull) Clarence Brown. Where to begin? There's the too prettified cinematography. There's the cloying religious type music, complete with cloying religious type chorus, every time someone dies or we see the too prettified shots of clouds. There's Gregory Peck, rehearsing for Atticus, who can't seem to open his mouth without imparting (instead of merely speaking) an ILL (Important Life Lesson, for those of you who don't spend a lot of time in the Hokey Swamps). And of course, like an oh so cute blanket, smothering all before him, there is adorable, spunky and noisome child actor Claude Jarman who makes one long for Dean Stockwell every time he's onscreen. And he's onscreen a lot. I'd say the basic problem with this mass of Fla. Sorghum is that it's too damn Disneyfied except that'd be unfair to Uncle Walt who showed us how this subject should and could be handled in "Old Yeller". Give it a C plus.
Review of The Yearling
