While this good film is no masterpiece, it certainly has earned its place in Hollywood lore. First of all, the screenplay was co-written by Bobbie Gentry. She hand picked Herman Rauncher( Summer of Forty Two) and spent weeks helping him with the screenplay Belinda( the stripper in the film) is a song from Bobbie's masterpiece album, PatchWork. Benjamin( the imaginary childhood friend) started out life as a Bobbie Gentry song too. Her vision is all over this film. Her grandparents farm in Mississippi even served as the back-drop for the story.Billie Joe is the first gay character portrayal in film history without a hint of stereotying. He is full of real depth and humanity. On a production budget of 1 million dollars, this film had a box office run of 50 million. Business savy Bobbie Gentry still owns 10% of it in her deal with Warner Brothers. Because of its success,Coal Miners Daughter would receive a huge production budget in 1979.
48 Reviews
Remembered with affection
kevjfarrell20 March 2015
I recall seeing this movie when it first came out - I was surprised at how empty the theater was. This is a movie based upon the beautifully charismatic song by Bobby Gentry from the 60's.
I thought the storyline was very engaging and realistic. It touches on a subject which may put some people off, but it is done in a mature way and isn't shown on-screen. A slice of life from the rural deep south. Easy on the eye and easy on the ear. I remember the acting performances being very good. For those of us who haven't experienced this type of upbringing, it was a good insight.
The song itself, is one of the great songs of 60's. For me the movie worked well. I could feel the long hot summers and the simplistic lifestyle and also showed you some of the darker side of life which was kept very quiet. It's a pity it never comes round on TV - it obviously wasn't a hit at the box office, but don't let that cloud your judgment. I think it's worth seeing. If you like Fried Green Tomatoes and The Trip To Bountiful, there's no reason to believe that you won't enjoy this.
I thought the storyline was very engaging and realistic. It touches on a subject which may put some people off, but it is done in a mature way and isn't shown on-screen. A slice of life from the rural deep south. Easy on the eye and easy on the ear. I remember the acting performances being very good. For those of us who haven't experienced this type of upbringing, it was a good insight.
The song itself, is one of the great songs of 60's. For me the movie worked well. I could feel the long hot summers and the simplistic lifestyle and also showed you some of the darker side of life which was kept very quiet. It's a pity it never comes round on TV - it obviously wasn't a hit at the box office, but don't let that cloud your judgment. I think it's worth seeing. If you like Fried Green Tomatoes and The Trip To Bountiful, there's no reason to believe that you won't enjoy this.
Introspective...a bit off-kilter...
MarieGabrielle15 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
The story, as several reviewers have noted, follows the Bobbie Gentry ballad.
Glynnis O'Connor, as a young woman coming of age in rural Mississippi. Robby Benson is good, although the story itself awkward at times, and at times when the plot is revealed outright embarrassing, with an improbable twist.
When this film came out, I saw this in the theater. It was considered radical at the time, much like "Summer of '42" in that there is a secret revealed which audiences clamored to see. Unfortunately, what is revealed is that Mr. Barksdale has taken liberties with Billy Joe; and Billy Joe eventually ends his life.
Glynnis O'Connor does well, portraying confusion, frustration and passion; the melange of emotions of a young woman, who wants to find love. One of the final scenes, when she encounters Barksdale on the Tallahatchie Bridge, is quite touching and sad. She sounds to him a world-weary adult, after all that has happened she tells Barksdale to basically, move on. Nothing can be done. It is time to let go. Moving in its finality, she is a young woman going out in the world with nothing but a suitcase; when he asks her what she will do she says "somehow I'll manage".
The ballad is evocative of earlier, hazy days in the country. While I have not lived in Mississippi, I have visited it and South Georgia, and also resided in rural northern Florida for a time. There is still the sense of the south, a slower pace, even today.
If you like movies of this era, you may enjoy this. The cinematography reflects the stillness and unspoiled beauty of the rural South. 8/10
Glynnis O'Connor, as a young woman coming of age in rural Mississippi. Robby Benson is good, although the story itself awkward at times, and at times when the plot is revealed outright embarrassing, with an improbable twist.
When this film came out, I saw this in the theater. It was considered radical at the time, much like "Summer of '42" in that there is a secret revealed which audiences clamored to see. Unfortunately, what is revealed is that Mr. Barksdale has taken liberties with Billy Joe; and Billy Joe eventually ends his life.
Glynnis O'Connor does well, portraying confusion, frustration and passion; the melange of emotions of a young woman, who wants to find love. One of the final scenes, when she encounters Barksdale on the Tallahatchie Bridge, is quite touching and sad. She sounds to him a world-weary adult, after all that has happened she tells Barksdale to basically, move on. Nothing can be done. It is time to let go. Moving in its finality, she is a young woman going out in the world with nothing but a suitcase; when he asks her what she will do she says "somehow I'll manage".
The ballad is evocative of earlier, hazy days in the country. While I have not lived in Mississippi, I have visited it and South Georgia, and also resided in rural northern Florida for a time. There is still the sense of the south, a slower pace, even today.
If you like movies of this era, you may enjoy this. The cinematography reflects the stillness and unspoiled beauty of the rural South. 8/10
"Nothing Ever Comes To No Good Up On Choctaw Ridge"
stryker-520 January 2000
Yes, it's the film of That Song. No movie can ever hope to to justice to the enigmatic, doom-laden 1967 Bobbie Gentry hit, or come close to capturing the stifling Southern atmosphere that the song evokes so well, but as a film in its own right, this prettily-photographed tale is not at all bad. The locations are all genuine Mississippi, and cinematographer Michel Hugo has done an excellent job of evoking the exuberance of high summer.
And talking of the 1960's, remember Jethro Bodine and his sixth-grade education? Well the actor who created Jethro (and is also the son of the heavyweight boxing champion), Max Baer Jr., produced and directed this quirky little offering.
It is Mississippi in 1953, and the pretty adolescent girl Bobby Lee is having fantasies about boys. Billy Joe McAlister begins to court her, but as their mutual affection blossoms, darker currents are swirling beneath the Tallahatchee Bridge ...
A careful, almost literal rendering of the song, the film is a commendable effort which gets stronger and more assured as it goes along. If it is somewhat heavy with Deep South cliche (plenty of "ah dew declayer" and "raaaht neighbourly"), it really couldn't have been otherwise. The song itself is overloaded with similar stuff. I personally did not like Bobby Lee's poem, which struck me as to syrupy and too slow.
Bobby Benson is adequate as the haunted Billy Joe, but the film's real success is the performance of Glynnis O'Connor as Bobby Lee. She handles the range of emotions with aplomb, and virtually demands that the viewer identify with her. The final scene on the bridge confirms that Bobby Lee has grown as a person and has emerged from the tragedy stronger than the adults around her.
Bobby Lee's huffy soliloquy on the country road is very good, with its subtle edge of self-deprecating humour, and the long courting-scene which follows it is nicely-judged. The rueful interregnum after Billy Joe's disappearance is beautifully done, dominated by the delightful Michel Legrand piano score. The rag doll floating in the water is a striking symbol, both of Billy Joe and of the abandonment of childhood.
Verdict - If a film version of the Bobbie Gentry song is going to be done, this is probably the best way to do it.
And talking of the 1960's, remember Jethro Bodine and his sixth-grade education? Well the actor who created Jethro (and is also the son of the heavyweight boxing champion), Max Baer Jr., produced and directed this quirky little offering.
It is Mississippi in 1953, and the pretty adolescent girl Bobby Lee is having fantasies about boys. Billy Joe McAlister begins to court her, but as their mutual affection blossoms, darker currents are swirling beneath the Tallahatchee Bridge ...
A careful, almost literal rendering of the song, the film is a commendable effort which gets stronger and more assured as it goes along. If it is somewhat heavy with Deep South cliche (plenty of "ah dew declayer" and "raaaht neighbourly"), it really couldn't have been otherwise. The song itself is overloaded with similar stuff. I personally did not like Bobby Lee's poem, which struck me as to syrupy and too slow.
Bobby Benson is adequate as the haunted Billy Joe, but the film's real success is the performance of Glynnis O'Connor as Bobby Lee. She handles the range of emotions with aplomb, and virtually demands that the viewer identify with her. The final scene on the bridge confirms that Bobby Lee has grown as a person and has emerged from the tragedy stronger than the adults around her.
Bobby Lee's huffy soliloquy on the country road is very good, with its subtle edge of self-deprecating humour, and the long courting-scene which follows it is nicely-judged. The rueful interregnum after Billy Joe's disappearance is beautifully done, dominated by the delightful Michel Legrand piano score. The rag doll floating in the water is a striking symbol, both of Billy Joe and of the abandonment of childhood.
Verdict - If a film version of the Bobbie Gentry song is going to be done, this is probably the best way to do it.
Interesting for its ambiguities
APJ22 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
It's interesting that most reviewers of this film seem to want to resolve one way or another the question of whether Billy Joe was gay or not. Music buffs prize the song for its ambiguities, but IMDb reviewers want the film to explain everything. Actually the film is all the better for leaving things unresolved. The passionate way that Billy Joe talks to and kisses his girlfriend Bobbie Lee might be interpreted as a genuine manifestation of desire, or it might be his desperate attempt to convince himself that he's heterosexual. Similarly, it's not clear whether Billy Joe was raped by the older man, or whether he slept with him willingly. My own interpretation is that Billy Joe is probably unsure of his own sexuality. After he confesses that he has slept with a man, Bobbie Lee tries to comfort him by saying, "I know you're not a man like that - I couldn't be wrong about you"; Billy Joe responds, "Well, you are wrong." It's not really relevant whether the character is gay or not; the important thing is that, at this stage, one sexual encounter with a man has led him to believe that he must be gay. As for whether he slept with the guy willingly, he says, "I knew what was happening". Also, it's unlikely that Bobbie Lee would let the other man go free, as she does in the final scene on the bridge, if she thought he had raped and caused the death of her boyfriend. If she thinks that Billy Joe went with him willingly, this scene makes more sense. But again, this doesn't necessary mean that he was gay. It could be that the conservative attitudes of 1950s Mississippi made it difficult for young people to feel comfortable with any sexuality at all - Billy Joe wants to have sex with his girlfriend, but that's taboo, and she is reluctant to go all the way, so he jumps at the first chance he sees for real sex, even if that means sleeping with a man. In either case, the film works as a satire on the small-minded attitudes of rural America, and the assumption, fuelled by Christianity, that sex is dirty and sinful. The tragedy of the film is that Billy Joe's society can't accept the idea that sex, whether straight or gay, is a natural urge. Since Billy Joe has internalised these attitudes, they destroy him.
Robby Benson's Mississippi
sfiver9 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Had not seen this movie since its theatrical release in 1976 or 77. Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor were considered upcoming stars and were also romantically linked. Anyway...
The film holds up extremely well considering it was made 35 years ago. If I'd never seen it and told it was made two years ago -- I'd easily believe it.
It's easy to fall in love with Robby Benson's Billy Joe. That is key to understanding this film. The extremely sensitive, yet sturdy teen, might be a bit overplayed by Benson, but Billy Joe's eccentricities is what brings Glynnis' 15-year old, Bobbie Lee character to sexual fruition, and almost always, frustration. We are left to guess Bobby Joe's age, but the character can't be much older than 17 (going on 13).
While their love affair is brief; it is played out in memorable and sensitive scenes. The moonlit pond scene is funny, true and uncannily tender considering the expected romantic (sexual) gesturing never occurs. The school-bus scene with Bobby Joe forcibly boards to find Billie Lee is comedic as it is romantic.
Billy Joe's confusion regarding his sexuality is uncomfortably confirmed when he realizes he is different. Perhaps because the film was made in 1975, and teen-age homosexuality was considered near pornographic, or just the writer and director's vision of keeping Billy Joe as mysterious as possible, the audience never views any sexual tensions between other male characters, let alone an encounter scene between the male partners. It would've made the picture and the character more believable especially when Bobby Joe tells Billie Lee about the encounter, which she casually dismisses as a drunken episode.
It leaves the audience wondering. Why did Bobby Joe commit suicide when Billie Lee was so willing to accept him? Is the overlay of southern views of homosexuality in the late 50's that drove him to his death? Or, was it just Bobby Joe's extreme (yet sturdy), impulsive, sensitivities that he refused to accept himself -- or even try.
6/10 as the film holds so well after 35 years, and Robby Benson's overwhelming portrayal. Of course, the story itself, and the mysteries that are never explained.
The film holds up extremely well considering it was made 35 years ago. If I'd never seen it and told it was made two years ago -- I'd easily believe it.
It's easy to fall in love with Robby Benson's Billy Joe. That is key to understanding this film. The extremely sensitive, yet sturdy teen, might be a bit overplayed by Benson, but Billy Joe's eccentricities is what brings Glynnis' 15-year old, Bobbie Lee character to sexual fruition, and almost always, frustration. We are left to guess Bobby Joe's age, but the character can't be much older than 17 (going on 13).
While their love affair is brief; it is played out in memorable and sensitive scenes. The moonlit pond scene is funny, true and uncannily tender considering the expected romantic (sexual) gesturing never occurs. The school-bus scene with Bobby Joe forcibly boards to find Billie Lee is comedic as it is romantic.
Billy Joe's confusion regarding his sexuality is uncomfortably confirmed when he realizes he is different. Perhaps because the film was made in 1975, and teen-age homosexuality was considered near pornographic, or just the writer and director's vision of keeping Billy Joe as mysterious as possible, the audience never views any sexual tensions between other male characters, let alone an encounter scene between the male partners. It would've made the picture and the character more believable especially when Bobby Joe tells Billie Lee about the encounter, which she casually dismisses as a drunken episode.
It leaves the audience wondering. Why did Bobby Joe commit suicide when Billie Lee was so willing to accept him? Is the overlay of southern views of homosexuality in the late 50's that drove him to his death? Or, was it just Bobby Joe's extreme (yet sturdy), impulsive, sensitivities that he refused to accept himself -- or even try.
6/10 as the film holds so well after 35 years, and Robby Benson's overwhelming portrayal. Of course, the story itself, and the mysteries that are never explained.
Ode to Brokeback Mountain perhaps?
ptb-814 June 2006
With a script by the author of SUMMER OF '42 and direction by Jethro Clampett and released in a rush after SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, near BUSTER AND BILLIE but before HOOPER, the 'Deep South' and it's boy-germ emotions get fried like green tomatoes on the hot planks of the Tallahatche bridge.... as the song goes, anyway. Interestingly, we are actually in pre-Brokeback Mountain territory here with Billy Joe's haystack roll becoming his unraveling. Robby Benson was an interesting and sensitive teen actor who made slight roles about nervous and realistic emotions in youths acceptable. This film is one that works well, and is particularly effective and evocative of the time and place and of clearly hothouse emotional conflict. Part of a mid 70s series of 'South' dramas and fights within.....films like those mentioned above and other Jan Michael Vincent tearjerkers (with biff) eg: BABY BLUE MARINE. He seems to have passed his Burt Reynolds years with silent aplomb and entered the world of cartoon voice-overs with greater success. He was widely liked at the time of this film (see ONE ON ONE) and well remembered. Then he met Burt, mentoring followed and disappeared. He would be 50 this year 2006. The Brokeback Mountain theme of this film is a 30 year old preview of all this year's fuss. However, nobody minded in '76.
Can't Live up to the Ballad
rebekel25 April 2009
Bobbie Gentry's artful haunting ballad "Ode to Billy Joe", centering on a family's dinnertable discussion of a local tragedy amid accounts of everyday happenings, is the inspiration for this film. At the time of it's release, the song inspired much speculation about the events and characters, so it was inevitable that a film version would eventually be released. The film casts Glynnis O'Conner and Robby Benson as the narrator and the subject of the song. The two talented young actors very authentically portray the intensity and passion of the modern-day Romeo and Juliet. The failing of the movie is its failure to capture the raw simplicity of the ballad, and the plot comes off as contrived or even sensationalistic. The screenwriters miss the opportunity to develop a central theme in the ballad - the irony of isolation and loneliness in a context of seeming closeness and intimacy.
A sweet and tragic rural romance.
DEREKFLINT9 March 2003
ODE TO BILLY JOE is a humerous and touching tale of events leading up to why "Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge", as related in the Bobbie Gentry hit. Director Max Baer Jr. (who would have thought "Jethro" had this kind of talent?) skillfully re-creates an atmosphere of 1950's rural Mississippi. and breathes life into characters only hinted at in the song. Scripted by Herman Raucher, with the same feeling of nostalgia he gave SUMMER OF '42, and beautifully scored by Michel Legrand, ODE TO BILLY JOE is a sweet and touching story of the awkwardness of teenage love, and the consequences of an unfortunate event, which, in today's politically correct times, would probably be scorned or laughed at. Glynnis O'Connor and Robby Benson, are re-teamed after their excellent debut in JEREMY. Another treasured film on VHS, that I hope will someday come out on DVD.
Great story, good acting, horrible dialog!!
kingtermite11 July 2005
The title says it all.
The story was great....a plot, a love story, a struggle, etc....
The acting wasn't great, but it was good. I think all the actors did a fair job.
The only real problem with the movie was its dialogue. It was so verbose that it was unrealistic that, even in the 50s they would speak that way.
It's like every sentence had to be stated in absolute verbose perfection as if it was being read from a book. Real dialogue needs to sound like people would actually talk.
An exceptional performance by Robbie Benson, btw.
The story was great....a plot, a love story, a struggle, etc....
The acting wasn't great, but it was good. I think all the actors did a fair job.
The only real problem with the movie was its dialogue. It was so verbose that it was unrealistic that, even in the 50s they would speak that way.
It's like every sentence had to be stated in absolute verbose perfection as if it was being read from a book. Real dialogue needs to sound like people would actually talk.
An exceptional performance by Robbie Benson, btw.
Has a wonderful, rambunctious feel early on, which is quickly mitigated by melodrama...
moonspinner5511 November 2006
Glynnis O'Connor gives a very fine performance as a small town young woman in 1953 involved in a mercurial romance with an erratic young man; tragedy ensues. Herman Raucher's screenplay, based on the evocative 1967 song by Bobbie Gentry, begins promisingly, and director Max Baer (Jr.) goes for a romantically rural look and feel that seems right on-target. Unfortunately, the story takes an uncomfortable turn in the second-half that, when viewed today, is terribly clichéd, if not downright offensive. O'Connor re-teams with her 1973 "Jeremy" co-star Robby Benson, and they match up well on-screen together; O'Connor's family is highly amusing while into the new inventions like in-door plumbing, but everyone here is at the mercy of the hoary, disappointing script. ** from ****
Nice adaptation of the hit song
Woodyanders13 July 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Mississippi, 1953. Gangly, yet likable and persistent Billy Joe McAllister (an excellent and engaging performance by Robby Benson) falls in love with precocious fifteen-year-old Bobbie Lee Hartley (a fine and appealing performance by Glynnis O'Connor). However, things go awry after Billy Joe becomes ashamed and suicidal over something awful he did at a jamboree while drunk out of his mind.
Director Max Baer Jr., working from a compelling script by Herman Raucher, offers a strong downhome rural atmosphere and a vivid depiction of the 1950's period setting; it's this surprisingly potent sense of time and place along with the stark rendering of the era's stifling sexual mores centered on the concepts of guilt and sin which in turn give this movie a sinewy dramatic punch. The winning and natural chemistry between Benson and O'Connor further holds the film together; they receive sturdy support from Joan Hotchkis as Bobbie Lee's doting mom Anna, Sandy McPeak as her no-nonsense dad Glenn, James Best as amiable saw mill boss Dewey Barksdale, and Terence Goodman as Bobbie Lee's hearty brother James. Michael Hugo's pretty cinematography provides a lovely picturesque look. Michael Legrand's delicately melodic score hits the harmonic spot. A solid little film.
Director Max Baer Jr., working from a compelling script by Herman Raucher, offers a strong downhome rural atmosphere and a vivid depiction of the 1950's period setting; it's this surprisingly potent sense of time and place along with the stark rendering of the era's stifling sexual mores centered on the concepts of guilt and sin which in turn give this movie a sinewy dramatic punch. The winning and natural chemistry between Benson and O'Connor further holds the film together; they receive sturdy support from Joan Hotchkis as Bobbie Lee's doting mom Anna, Sandy McPeak as her no-nonsense dad Glenn, James Best as amiable saw mill boss Dewey Barksdale, and Terence Goodman as Bobbie Lee's hearty brother James. Michael Hugo's pretty cinematography provides a lovely picturesque look. Michael Legrand's delicately melodic score hits the harmonic spot. A solid little film.
well remembered TV movie in my high school freshmen year
cormac_zoso1 January 2014
i remember it being kind of looked forward to those who mentioned during the day at school ... i remember the song used to creep me out listening to my radio when younger at night after lights out of course ... it was just so strange and southern Gothic, now a genre and feel i have such a love for ... (riders on the storms" creeped me out to but i think that was justified :P) but the movie had Robbie Benson, sensitive 70s boy of the moment so of girls were going to watch. my parents gave me weird looks when i'd ask about watching things like this ... so i got a strange look that night and a couple of low-breathed 'asshole' or 'fagggot' responses from my two older brothers ... but they let me which was cool ... really what i wanted to know was all that wasn't talked about in the song ... billy joe is just a kid who jumped off a bridge basically ... now we can look at the lyrics and into them and say, OK the girl narrating or we are using her eyes as she shows us various clues and feelings to where by the end of the song we can know she is the girl missing the dead boy the most ...
but there still a lot more and that is certainly a part of a great song ... 'where's the rest of it? what happens to joe and blow?" ... but it's part of the continued allures of a song is this also ... maybe if i listen to it again, one more time, it will all click into place ...
well the movie wasn't what i expecting tho i don't what that was any longer ... but having just started high school and seeing how the weak are corralled and abused by the strong, that was a startling aspect really ... i thought it was very real how they presented it ..
all in all, the feeling of the movie remains so i gave it 7 because it seemed to be a seven :)
but there still a lot more and that is certainly a part of a great song ... 'where's the rest of it? what happens to joe and blow?" ... but it's part of the continued allures of a song is this also ... maybe if i listen to it again, one more time, it will all click into place ...
well the movie wasn't what i expecting tho i don't what that was any longer ... but having just started high school and seeing how the weak are corralled and abused by the strong, that was a startling aspect really ... i thought it was very real how they presented it ..
all in all, the feeling of the movie remains so i gave it 7 because it seemed to be a seven :)
Dumb Melodrama Made from a Great Song
bkkaz14 September 2022
Hollywood. They take something that's pretty straightforward and assign it to a committee to turn it into something needlessly convoluted and working against itself.
No, Bobbie Gentry never confirmed what her song was about, but Occam's Razor, a boy tosses something into the river and then, despondent, kills himself. His only mourner is the girl who seems to know more than she's able to reveal to her obtuse family. Oh, what could it be?
Anyone with a lick of common sense would say it's obviously their baby, born premature or aborted before anyone figures out she's pregnant.
This movie takes that simple, tragically elegant idea and turns it into some ridiculous soap opera with a gay subtext that is just a completely different story. I get it. The writers, director, and producer had to get paid, so they couldn't just faithfully tell a poignant story because they didn't have the guts or imagination. But this replacement is just so uninspired.
No, Bobbie Gentry never confirmed what her song was about, but Occam's Razor, a boy tosses something into the river and then, despondent, kills himself. His only mourner is the girl who seems to know more than she's able to reveal to her obtuse family. Oh, what could it be?
Anyone with a lick of common sense would say it's obviously their baby, born premature or aborted before anyone figures out she's pregnant.
This movie takes that simple, tragically elegant idea and turns it into some ridiculous soap opera with a gay subtext that is just a completely different story. I get it. The writers, director, and producer had to get paid, so they couldn't just faithfully tell a poignant story because they didn't have the guts or imagination. But this replacement is just so uninspired.
That's What I Love/Hate About the South
codyfantabulon10 January 2003
If this film had been directed by Truffaut or Bergman it would have swept Cannes. The fact that many viewers find it almost impossible to understand is testimony to the film's authenticity. As a life-long Southerner I feel compelled to state that anyone from the South over the age of 35 either knows or is one of these characters. The time period represented is one which lives in the memories of those alive today. Mississippi is particularly well drawn. I lived in Mississippi for four years and this film captures that distinct Mississippi flavor of charm,vindictiveness,religious observance,and sin. The bridge scene is what Southern pride and "redneck" are all about. Daddy just WON'T back up. One of the main themes of Southern art is the fact that many of the characters are so far from introspection and so close to instinctive, impulsive, animalistic behavior. When someone is "different" tragedy and/or myth tends to happen. Tennessee Williams mined that vein. Like the characters in this film, his people often dimly understood that they needed to either leave home or accept self-revelation in the confines of their environment. Most couldn't do either. The result is usually some sort of denial,death, or sacrifice. Great films/novels/short stories about the South have a sense of yearning and fatalism which I find very honest and moving. If you are into Russian literature, you are probably into Southern literature too! My thanks to Max for this beautiful film.
Tragic Tale
mchl8827 December 2023
Tragic movie.
The backstory on this 1976 film is interesting. 10 years earlier the country music singer Bobbie Gentry had written a song with the same title which tells of a young man committing suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. But Gentry's lyrics never reveal why the fictional Billy Joe killed himself and in interviews about the song she was very coy and unrevealing.
So, they made a movie about it. Robbie Benton, teen idol of the 70s, plays the title character although this movie is really about the young girl who loves hm: Bobby Joe Hartley, played by Glynnis O'Connor. I thought these two young actors were incredible in their roles and they held this otherwise flawed movie together. The subject matter can feel a little strange at times (there aren't many movies these days that delve into the sexual desires of a 15 year old girl) but if you can get past that, I think you'll enjoy this movie. It's not an all time great one but just for Benton and O'Connor's acting alone, it was worth watching.
The backstory on this 1976 film is interesting. 10 years earlier the country music singer Bobbie Gentry had written a song with the same title which tells of a young man committing suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. But Gentry's lyrics never reveal why the fictional Billy Joe killed himself and in interviews about the song she was very coy and unrevealing.
So, they made a movie about it. Robbie Benton, teen idol of the 70s, plays the title character although this movie is really about the young girl who loves hm: Bobby Joe Hartley, played by Glynnis O'Connor. I thought these two young actors were incredible in their roles and they held this otherwise flawed movie together. The subject matter can feel a little strange at times (there aren't many movies these days that delve into the sexual desires of a 15 year old girl) but if you can get past that, I think you'll enjoy this movie. It's not an all time great one but just for Benton and O'Connor's acting alone, it was worth watching.
sweaty hormones
SnoopyStyle14 September 2022
It's 1950's Mississippi. Billy Joe McAllister (Robby Benson) is courting Bobbie Lee Hartley (Glynnis O'Connor). She's 15 and too young to date according to her parents.
I don't know anything about the song although it sounds a bit familiar. I don't particularly like Billy Joe. I do understand the uncontrolled hormones. He's just very aggressive. This whole movie is a bit aggressive starting with the three Bubba rednecks. They are so broadly drawn that they are no more than cartoon characters. The whole movie is a bit broadly drawn. I do like Bobbie Lee's character. The ending is somewhat frustrating. I can't buy what everybody is selling. Everybody is assuming what happened. The movie keeps skipping over some important scenes. There are some compelling reveals and they are interesting big topics.
I don't know anything about the song although it sounds a bit familiar. I don't particularly like Billy Joe. I do understand the uncontrolled hormones. He's just very aggressive. This whole movie is a bit aggressive starting with the three Bubba rednecks. They are so broadly drawn that they are no more than cartoon characters. The whole movie is a bit broadly drawn. I do like Bobbie Lee's character. The ending is somewhat frustrating. I can't buy what everybody is selling. Everybody is assuming what happened. The movie keeps skipping over some important scenes. There are some compelling reveals and they are interesting big topics.
Classic, Tragic love story.
ghstdncr222 October 2001
An excellent movie my today's standards. There are no "F" words, no visual sex, & the only nudity is a brief shot of the top portion of a woman's breasts (no nipples shown) before the camera cuts away to another scene. I would recommend this to any parent wanting a movie that they can show in a mixed audience of teens/pre-teens. If it were made today, it would probably receive a PG rating.
Robby Benson & Glynnis O'Connor play their parts well. The movie manages to capture the haunting atmosphere of the song by Bobbie Gentry. I saw it for the first time when I was 15 in 1976 and I still love to watch it.
Robby Benson & Glynnis O'Connor play their parts well. The movie manages to capture the haunting atmosphere of the song by Bobbie Gentry. I saw it for the first time when I was 15 in 1976 and I still love to watch it.
Moral paradoxes of 1950's rural Mississippi
wrxsti5413 August 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Ode to Billy Joe attempts to answer the hypothetical question raised in Bobby Gentry's 1967 No. 1 hit song of the same name, namely why did Tallahatchie County teenage boy Billie Joe McAllister commit suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie bridge.
What unfolds is an intense, frank look at the inconsistent morals of early 1950's life amongst poor white families in the Mississippi Delta. The movie was shot in Tallahatchie County in the summer of 1975 and accurately portrays how hard life was in the rural deep south: outhouse toilets, many houses with no electricity, some families still using a horse and cart to get around, the powerful influence of the local Baptist church and preacher in the community and the seemingly ubiquitous polite but strict courting rituals often honored in the breach. Examples of this abound: fine upstanding pillars of the community like the Sheriff who not only turns a blind eye to the carload of out of county hookers who show up to service the married men at the local Jamboree but avails himself of their services. Eligible church going young men that every mother wants their oh-so-young teenage daughter to marry but admitting to sending out of town a girl whom he had a fling with for an abortion all the while seeming to adhere to strict anti-abortion beliefs.
In this morass of contradictions the movie explores the budding romance of 18 year old Billie Joe McAllister (played by 19 year old Robby Benson) and 15 year old Bobby Lee Hartley (played by 20 year old Glynnis O'Connor). This was the second of three love story movies starring the pair (Jeremy in 1973 and Our Town in 1977). Billy Joe is a simple, handsome, happy boy working in a local lumber yard who falls for the shy but pretty Bobby Lee. He tries a number of times to formally court Bobby Lee but she is torn between intense physical attraction to Billy Joe and caution instilled by the social mores of the time and place and the knowledge that her father would object to the courtship due to her youth. Billy Joe is clearly head over heels in love and, in the absence of formal recognition of their courtship by Bobby Lee's parents, he puts increasing pressure on Bobby Lee to consummate their love secretly as appears to be common amongst his peers. Bobby Lee again is torn but will still roll in the hay and passionately kiss her beau.
The movie takes a dark turn when Billy Joe disappears for a few days after a large community Jamboree where he gets drunk on moonshine liquor put into beer bottles. Bobby Lee finds him at their favorite make out spot by the lake in a disheveled and distraught state. He seems inconsolable because he begins to own up to gay sex with a man and that he is now unworthy of her. At first he is coy enough for Bobby Lee's naivete to not allow the magnitude of what he says to sink in. He wants to prove his true love for her by meeting her on the Tallahatchie bridge where he says they will go away and make love. Bobby Lee resolves to meet Billy Joe for this purpose casting aside the caution instilled in her.
In the most poignant scene of the movie, Billy Joe begins to tell her what happened and then runs with her into the forest where they embrace passionately, and Bobby Lee gives him the green light to go all the way, but Billy Lee can only go so far and he pulls back distraught and admits to the homosexual encounter.
Having seen a number of Robby Benson movies before Ode to Billy Joe, in my opinion, his performance as Billy Joe is his finest performance. He portrays the innocence of youth and the passion of young love perfectly but what makes his performance stand out is portraying on camera, perhaps for the first time in US movie history, the unbearable shame that he carried as a consequence of the repressive but hypocritical customs of the day over homosexuality. Bobby Lee tries to will this awful event away, but it has clearly torn Billy Joe's life apart. It is a truly heart rending and powerful performance and it is no surprise that the movie gave massive impetus to his already rising reputation as a teenage heartthrob.
Glynnis O'Connor is equally powerful as Bobby Lee portraying teenage girl coming-of-age dilemmas in this era of the deep south but eventually she displays a surprisingly mature and nuanced appreciation of the impact of Billy Joe's suicide. She chooses to leave town and not refute the widespread rumor that the suicide was because he shamed his and her families by impregnating her at such a young age. Her understanding extends to meeting the older man who appears to have initiated the sexual encounter with Billy Joe (his boss Dewey Barksdale played by James Best) by trying to dissuade him from his stated mission of owning up to her parents as to the real reason why Billy Joe jumped.
It is a great movie, full of the complexities and hypocrisies of life back then and played out against a realistic geographical and cultural backdrop. Illustrative of an age when sexually explicit scenes were rarer and more frowned upon, it is nice to see such a delicate subject covered without nudity and explicit sexual scenes. Yes - in the modern era the sexual encounter would be out in the open and covered as a ho hum, no big deal event but this 1970's movie is able to convey the incredible emotional conundrum Billy Joe found himself in because that was reality of life back then.
What unfolds is an intense, frank look at the inconsistent morals of early 1950's life amongst poor white families in the Mississippi Delta. The movie was shot in Tallahatchie County in the summer of 1975 and accurately portrays how hard life was in the rural deep south: outhouse toilets, many houses with no electricity, some families still using a horse and cart to get around, the powerful influence of the local Baptist church and preacher in the community and the seemingly ubiquitous polite but strict courting rituals often honored in the breach. Examples of this abound: fine upstanding pillars of the community like the Sheriff who not only turns a blind eye to the carload of out of county hookers who show up to service the married men at the local Jamboree but avails himself of their services. Eligible church going young men that every mother wants their oh-so-young teenage daughter to marry but admitting to sending out of town a girl whom he had a fling with for an abortion all the while seeming to adhere to strict anti-abortion beliefs.
In this morass of contradictions the movie explores the budding romance of 18 year old Billie Joe McAllister (played by 19 year old Robby Benson) and 15 year old Bobby Lee Hartley (played by 20 year old Glynnis O'Connor). This was the second of three love story movies starring the pair (Jeremy in 1973 and Our Town in 1977). Billy Joe is a simple, handsome, happy boy working in a local lumber yard who falls for the shy but pretty Bobby Lee. He tries a number of times to formally court Bobby Lee but she is torn between intense physical attraction to Billy Joe and caution instilled by the social mores of the time and place and the knowledge that her father would object to the courtship due to her youth. Billy Joe is clearly head over heels in love and, in the absence of formal recognition of their courtship by Bobby Lee's parents, he puts increasing pressure on Bobby Lee to consummate their love secretly as appears to be common amongst his peers. Bobby Lee again is torn but will still roll in the hay and passionately kiss her beau.
The movie takes a dark turn when Billy Joe disappears for a few days after a large community Jamboree where he gets drunk on moonshine liquor put into beer bottles. Bobby Lee finds him at their favorite make out spot by the lake in a disheveled and distraught state. He seems inconsolable because he begins to own up to gay sex with a man and that he is now unworthy of her. At first he is coy enough for Bobby Lee's naivete to not allow the magnitude of what he says to sink in. He wants to prove his true love for her by meeting her on the Tallahatchie bridge where he says they will go away and make love. Bobby Lee resolves to meet Billy Joe for this purpose casting aside the caution instilled in her.
In the most poignant scene of the movie, Billy Joe begins to tell her what happened and then runs with her into the forest where they embrace passionately, and Bobby Lee gives him the green light to go all the way, but Billy Lee can only go so far and he pulls back distraught and admits to the homosexual encounter.
Having seen a number of Robby Benson movies before Ode to Billy Joe, in my opinion, his performance as Billy Joe is his finest performance. He portrays the innocence of youth and the passion of young love perfectly but what makes his performance stand out is portraying on camera, perhaps for the first time in US movie history, the unbearable shame that he carried as a consequence of the repressive but hypocritical customs of the day over homosexuality. Bobby Lee tries to will this awful event away, but it has clearly torn Billy Joe's life apart. It is a truly heart rending and powerful performance and it is no surprise that the movie gave massive impetus to his already rising reputation as a teenage heartthrob.
Glynnis O'Connor is equally powerful as Bobby Lee portraying teenage girl coming-of-age dilemmas in this era of the deep south but eventually she displays a surprisingly mature and nuanced appreciation of the impact of Billy Joe's suicide. She chooses to leave town and not refute the widespread rumor that the suicide was because he shamed his and her families by impregnating her at such a young age. Her understanding extends to meeting the older man who appears to have initiated the sexual encounter with Billy Joe (his boss Dewey Barksdale played by James Best) by trying to dissuade him from his stated mission of owning up to her parents as to the real reason why Billy Joe jumped.
It is a great movie, full of the complexities and hypocrisies of life back then and played out against a realistic geographical and cultural backdrop. Illustrative of an age when sexually explicit scenes were rarer and more frowned upon, it is nice to see such a delicate subject covered without nudity and explicit sexual scenes. Yes - in the modern era the sexual encounter would be out in the open and covered as a ho hum, no big deal event but this 1970's movie is able to convey the incredible emotional conundrum Billy Joe found himself in because that was reality of life back then.
An Incredibly Embarrassing Film
gftbiloxi8 April 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Bobbie Gentry's album ODE TO BILLY JOE knocked The Beatles' SGT. PEPPER off the top of the American music charts in the 1960s, and the title track became a musical touchstone for many of that generation. It was a ballad, and it offered the story of a rural Mississippi farm girl who learns through casual conversation over the kitchen table that Billy Joe McAllister has jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge. Simply written and performed, Gentry's song had an aura of mysterious tragedy, for clearly there was some unknown relationship between the singer and Billy Joe--and while Gentry implied a great deal, she did not specify the details, leaving her listeners to wonder and make interpretations of their own.
One of the most popular ideas about the song was that Billy Joe was black, and that the "something" he and the singer had been seen throwing off the Tallahatchie bridge was their secretly born infant--and in many respects this interpretation fit the details of the lyrics Gentry wrote. But Gentry herself left the mystery intact, and although often pressed over the years, she wisely never specified exactly who Billy Joe was, what the relationship had been, what had been throw off the bridge--or even if the "something" thrown off the bridge was even relevant.
Enter Hollywood.
Presumably the powers that be rejected the idea of making Billy Joe black--and there is some justification there, for Gentry never said he was, and if indeed he was black the entire plot of the film would be obvious the instant the character appeared on the screen. So they came up with a different twist. In the mid-1970s, Hollywood considered homosexuality to be the dirty secret to end all dirty secrets, and films still generally presented gay characters as desperately unhappy at best.
Now, the general idea that Hollywood came up with wasn't in and of itself bad--and if you consider what might have been done with it the possibilities are really intriguing. But what they did with it in fact was an entirely different matter. Not only is the plot and script bad, they are so bad that they are downright embarrassing, and whenever the film is mentioned I find myself unable to suppress a reflexive cringe.
But there is a tremendous irony here. When Hollywood wants to a movie about Mississippi, it almost never actually goes to Mississippi; instead, the director goes to Florida, or South Carolina, or Georgia, or just shoots the film on a Los Angeles backlot. The result, of course, is that it looks like anywhere except Mississippi. But while Max Bear is no great shakes as a director, he actually did film the movie in Mississippi, and what's more he filmed it around the old Talliahatchie bridge, so for once they got at least that much right. And the cast is also quite good, particularly lead Glynnis O'Connor. So the elements were there: it looked right, the cast was strong, and they had an idea with potential. But in truth, that just makes the actual result that much more unfortunate.
If you're a fan of the song, or if you grew up in Mississippi as I did, you might want to sit through this film once. But trust me: once will be enough. And if you don't care about the song and have no interest in seeing what rural Mississippi actually looks like as opposed to what Hollywood thinks it looks like, you need to avoid this one like the plague.
Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer
One of the most popular ideas about the song was that Billy Joe was black, and that the "something" he and the singer had been seen throwing off the Tallahatchie bridge was their secretly born infant--and in many respects this interpretation fit the details of the lyrics Gentry wrote. But Gentry herself left the mystery intact, and although often pressed over the years, she wisely never specified exactly who Billy Joe was, what the relationship had been, what had been throw off the bridge--or even if the "something" thrown off the bridge was even relevant.
Enter Hollywood.
Presumably the powers that be rejected the idea of making Billy Joe black--and there is some justification there, for Gentry never said he was, and if indeed he was black the entire plot of the film would be obvious the instant the character appeared on the screen. So they came up with a different twist. In the mid-1970s, Hollywood considered homosexuality to be the dirty secret to end all dirty secrets, and films still generally presented gay characters as desperately unhappy at best.
Now, the general idea that Hollywood came up with wasn't in and of itself bad--and if you consider what might have been done with it the possibilities are really intriguing. But what they did with it in fact was an entirely different matter. Not only is the plot and script bad, they are so bad that they are downright embarrassing, and whenever the film is mentioned I find myself unable to suppress a reflexive cringe.
But there is a tremendous irony here. When Hollywood wants to a movie about Mississippi, it almost never actually goes to Mississippi; instead, the director goes to Florida, or South Carolina, or Georgia, or just shoots the film on a Los Angeles backlot. The result, of course, is that it looks like anywhere except Mississippi. But while Max Bear is no great shakes as a director, he actually did film the movie in Mississippi, and what's more he filmed it around the old Talliahatchie bridge, so for once they got at least that much right. And the cast is also quite good, particularly lead Glynnis O'Connor. So the elements were there: it looked right, the cast was strong, and they had an idea with potential. But in truth, that just makes the actual result that much more unfortunate.
If you're a fan of the song, or if you grew up in Mississippi as I did, you might want to sit through this film once. But trust me: once will be enough. And if you don't care about the song and have no interest in seeing what rural Mississippi actually looks like as opposed to what Hollywood thinks it looks like, you need to avoid this one like the plague.
Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer
loved it
bbuudd40323 November 2004
I remember seeing 'Ode to Billy Joe' when I was about twelve, and just starting to deal with the fact that I was gay. Growing up in rural Wisconsin I could relate very well to the negative attitudes towards gays, and find it very believable that a young gay person in that situation would consider killing themself. I also find it very believable that a young gay person would date a person of the opposite sex, just think about how many gay people do get married. Even though Billy Joe is a tragic figure I found the movie to be comforting, I think I took comfort in the fact that at least someone was talking about homosexuality, being Catholic my family never spoke about sex much less homosexuality and I think that is the way it was in most families in the seventies. Over the years I have thought of that movie often and I think at times it helped me keep my sanity, I would love to see it again!
Some incorrect conclusions by other viewer commentators
NickMat2523 August 2005
Warning: Spoilers
After watching this film on CMT recently, having not seen the film since I was a young man in the '70s, I was impressed by the fact that the filmmaker had definitely captured a time and an attitude prevalent in the South. Unfortnetely, we are still struggling against anti-gay sentiment in the USA (read ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy). We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go when it pertains to normal human sexuality. And the commentators that indignantly insist that Billy Joe was raped-- I suggest that they watch the whole film in it's entirety (thanks CMT for not cutting out the scene where Robby Benson--the Billy Joe character --admits to Bobby Lee that he willingly had sex with the man). A very sad and evocative film dealing with very real issues of homophobia, denial, hypocrisy and intolerance!
Maybe not the worst film ever made, but a contender.
Thea-416 August 2001
Okay, making a film of the Bobbie Gentry song was a dubious idea to begin with; but it's hard to imagine a more boorish attempt. I lost count of the references to the Chattahoochie Bridge ("nothing good ever happened on that bridge") and the repetitions of the name Billy Joe McAllister. Forgivable, perhaps. What's less so is Herman Raucher's painfully expository dialogue ("Bobbie Lee, you know the Rural Electrification Project doesn't provide power to remote areas!"), the cast's excruciating Southern accents (all bad, but not even uniformly so)and the teenagers' Gone With the Wind diction. Though Jethro's intent was apparently serious, this film is high camp and can be enjoyed thus: Treat it as a frat boy drinking game. Watch the film with a bottle of tequila, and take a long swig every time someone says the word "bridge".
According to the mores of his bible belt community
bkoganbing18 July 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Something about the times I think made Bobbie Gentry's Old To Billie Joe a real stand out even today in our popular music and culture. The assassinations, the Vietnam War, post civil rights era and finally that spark of revolution from Stonewall. The last when a movie was made of Bobbie Gentry's narrative song it was given a gay theme.
Even in 2017 I can see this same story being played out exactly the same. This awkward kid Billy Joe McAllister kind of likes Bobby Lee Hartley. But one night getting totally plastered he gives into a man who has his way with him.
The overwhelming guilt that Robby Benson feels is that he liked it. But according to the mores of his bible belt community this is the worst thing possible. Then he has trouble with Glynis O'Connor playing Bobby Lee. Liked with a guy, couldn't perform with a girl, he felt he had no reason to live. In some of our communities that attitude holds sway still. Possibly Benson might have taken some snake oil conversion therapy and hope for a cure. Nothing worse than being gay except being gay in the bible belt.
At the end we learn it was his employer James Best who seduced him and Best and O'Connor decide what to do. Some might scoff but I think what O'Connor does is simple and sweet in her own way. One thing is certain, she certainly knows how the minds of her neighbors work.
A wonderful film inspired by a great ballad.
Even in 2017 I can see this same story being played out exactly the same. This awkward kid Billy Joe McAllister kind of likes Bobby Lee Hartley. But one night getting totally plastered he gives into a man who has his way with him.
The overwhelming guilt that Robby Benson feels is that he liked it. But according to the mores of his bible belt community this is the worst thing possible. Then he has trouble with Glynis O'Connor playing Bobby Lee. Liked with a guy, couldn't perform with a girl, he felt he had no reason to live. In some of our communities that attitude holds sway still. Possibly Benson might have taken some snake oil conversion therapy and hope for a cure. Nothing worse than being gay except being gay in the bible belt.
At the end we learn it was his employer James Best who seduced him and Best and O'Connor decide what to do. Some might scoff but I think what O'Connor does is simple and sweet in her own way. One thing is certain, she certainly knows how the minds of her neighbors work.
A wonderful film inspired by a great ballad.
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