What’s It About
This was the first major sound film to deal with the Civil War’s effects on the Southern family. It preceded GONE WITH THE WIND by four years and Margaret Mitchell’s novel by a year. Sullavan plays the daughter of Connolly and Beecher, the heads of the Bedfords, a wealthy plantation-owning family whose sons and cousins fought the North. Southern belle Sullavan falls in love with her cousin Scott who is opposed to the bloodshed occurring on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
Why It’s Gone
It’s too old for anyone to care. It’s not Gone with the wind or The Wizard of Oz or any movie close to that level of cinematography. It has nothing valuable to add to the narrative of American cinema. In short, while the picture is occasionally on target, it is more often uneventful– and downright absurd in its treatment of the slavery issue. Don’t forget it was 1935.