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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Tobacco Road (1941)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

Turnips

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Tobacco Road on DVD.

John Ford's weirdest film plays like a flip-side of -- or an alternate reality to -- The Grapes of Wrath. Based on a novel by Erskine Caldwell and a long-running play by Jack Kirkland (but reportedly gutted by screenwriter Nunnally Johnson), the film focuses on a group of hillbillies who still occupy their farmland, long after crops have ceased to grow. Charley Grapewin provides some balance as Jeeter Lester, a schemer with a good heart. But many other performances are shrill and agitating, such as William Tracy as Jeeter's son "Dude" and Marjorie Rambeau as the caterwauling Sister Bessie Rice. Just wait till you witness the sight sexy young Gene Tierney trying to seduce Ward Bond by lounging on the dirty ground, inching toward him and raising dust clouds as she goes. Even more bizarre is one of the movie's final exchanges ("where's grandma?"). Ford's penchant for broad comedy is at its worst here, but at the same time, he also manages some of his most beautiful lyrical passages.

With: Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson, Dana Andrews, Slim Summerville, Ward Bond, Grant Mitchell, Zeffie Tilbury
Written by: Nunnally Johnson, based on a novel by Erskine Caldwell and a play by Jack Kirkland
Directed by: John Ford
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 84 minutes
Date: February 2, 2010