The first of three addendums to the recent review of Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.
My thinking is that the star ratings concern the novel; it's either that or they were left a couple of decades back by centenarians who remembered the film from when they were young.
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| Montreal Gazette, 21 May 1928 |
What did they see?
I've had to rely on ninety-eight-year-old reviews, none of which are terribly long or contain much detail. The one published in the 7 December 1927 edition of Variety is the most interesting:
The reference to a "Minnesota household" intrigues. The novel is set in the fictional farming community of Oeland, which is generally accepted to be in the very real province of Manitoba.
Judging from surviving stills, "poor wig outfitting" seems fair.
Eve Southern played Judith Gare. That's Anita Stewart as Lind Archer on the right. Of the cast, Russell Simpson, who portrayed Caleb Gare, is hands down the best remembered. He was vast as Pa Joad in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath.
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| Russell Simpson as Caleb Gare and Bele Bennett as wife Amelia in Wild Geese. |
The reviewer makes no mention of the film's ending, but others do. Apparently, it isn't nearly so positive as Ostenso's.
Returning to those IMDb ratings, I note that no one left an actual review. My thinking is that the one star reviews were left by frustrated high school students looking for a shortcut. This and other Goodreads one-star reviews suggest as much.
And so, this anecdote:
In 1985, I work part-time in a Montreal video store. For context, this was at the year in which Betamax was suffering its death throes. Come autumn, kids who'd previously rented Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Risky Business abruptly shifted focus to The Natural, the 1984 Barry Levinson film about a middle aged hasbeen who becomes a baseball legend. Set in the early twentieth century, 48-year-old Robert Redford played the lead.
The sudden demand caught the store's owners off-guard. We had eight copies of The Breakfast Club and just one of The Natural. As it turned out, students in nearby Bialik High School had been assigned the Bernard Malamud novel upon which the film is based.
A young man, not much older than the kids I was serving, I'd seen The Natural. Much as I like Levinson and Redford, I did not like their collaboration. My issue was wasn't so much with the body rather the ending, which is diametrically opposed to Malamud's perfect, perfectly depressing conclusion.
It's also very much over the top.
Let this be a lesson, kids.
Read the book.
A young man, not much older than the kids I was serving, I'd seen The Natural. Much as I like Levinson and Redford, I did not like their collaboration. My issue was wasn't so much with the body rather the ending, which is diametrically opposed to Malamud's perfect, perfectly depressing conclusion.
It's also very much over the top.
Let this be a lesson, kids.
Read the book.
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