How sad is this?

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

John Ford directed this adaptation of a hit play about a family of dirt poor toothless Southern farmers. Charley Grapewin is great and carries the film on his shoulders. Elizabeth Patterson gives an enjoyable (and sometimes sensitive) turn as his wife. William Tracy plays a savage character who grates on the nerves but he does a good job at it. Ward Bond is funny as a neighbor married to one of their daughters. He has the movie's most crowd-pleasing scene when he puts Tracy in his place. Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney have small roles. I think Tierney spoke less than twenty words the whole film.Any comparison between this film and Ford's classic from the year before, Grapes of Wrath, is absurd. Beyond the very superficial similarities, they are nothing alike. This doesn't have the gravitas or artistry of that film. The closest it comes is the scene when Grapewin and Patterson talk about two of their children who left home and never returned. The rest is a grotesque comedy about people that are almost cartoon characters more than humans.Obviously not for the easily offended among us. This film peddles in just about every Southern stereotype you can think of. Having grown up in the South with relatives not too far removed from the types of characters displayed in this, I'm not really bothered by it. Stereotypes generally have some basis in truth, no matter how much we don't want to admit it. Amusing at times, moving once or twice, but not the masterpiece it wants to be. See it for Grapewin's energetic performance if nothing else.

As a longtime Ford fan, I only recently saw 'Tobacco Road', and it more than exceeded expectations. It's instantly one of my favorite comedies. It's actually very edgy and adventurous, sort of a wry antidote to the virtuous 'Grapes of Wrath' that Ford was obliged to be so respectful with.I howled with pleasure, as I would with any fringe film with a comedic angle. In this film experience, you don't need to be tuned in to 'revisionist film theory' when you're watching it.Dennis Hopper would have fit perfectly in it. Or Billy Bob Thornton. Or Jack Nance. As it is, the cast is perfect, from Slim Summerville on down. William Tracy's manic goofball performance, which some viewers think is 'over the top', is just plain crazy brilliant and is even ahead of its time (think early Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey...).Everything automotive in this picture is particularly hilarious, forecasting 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and 'It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World'. The frenzied car chaos is inspired, from start to finish.I know this picture has been either trashed or quickly written off in every John Ford biography, but I find it to be a genuine treasure because I'm taking it just for what it is - not as a book, not as a play, but as an excellent production by the masterful Ford, whose touch is apparent in every shot and speech.Naturally, it is a companion piece to that other Caldwell examination of Southern oddballs, 'God's Little Acre', which is its own sort of gem due to Anthony Mann's care and attention. Then there's Kazan's 'Baby Doll', which is about as bizarre as they come. Not to mention the Coen Brothers' much lauded 'O Brother Where Art Thou'. How come that film wasn't so derided for 'making fun of poor white Southerners' like 'Tobacco Road' has been? Part of the American Experience has been to point out our oddballs, and show that they are 'possible' here. 'Tobacco Road' is all about such an examination, and Ford pulls it off with just as much aplomb as he does with families in Wales or migrants from Oklahoma. It is what it is: a great and perceptive comedy. Sort of like Balzac. Or for that matter, like Don Knotts' series of Americana comedies.There is a dandy 'written in sand' title sequence (another counter to 'Grapes' and its rough-sketch titles), and Arthur Miller's lithographic camera-work is typically outstanding, almost like the works of Thomas Hart Benton. David Buttolph's cheerful and (Alfred) Newman-like score is perfectly appropriate without being a parody.I'm powerful sorry that Erskine Caldwell and Nunnally Johnson were disappointed in the picture, but I think Zanuck and Ford really knew what they were doing.'Tobacco' is one of the more delightful film discoveries I've had. I only wish Gene Tierney was in it more.

Tobacco Road (1941)** 1/2 (out of 4) I take pride in watching bizarre movies from every country and every decade but I never figured that's what I'd be viewing when I sat down to watch this John Ford film that seems to have been forgotten over the years. The movie, based on the famous novel and long-running play, centers on Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family, poor Georgia farmers who are about to get kicked off their land unless they can round up $100 to stay for a year. That's pretty much all there is to know story wise, although the screenplay does take the film into different directions as the family is faced with the possibility of losing everything they love. If people got wide-eyed about the way Ford showed Indians then they're probably going to have their heads rolling off at this look at a redneck family. I was really, really caught off guard by how incredibly bizarre and strange this movie was. I think part of this is due to the comedy never working and for some strange reason this gives the film a rather bizarre atmosphere because you're watching this strange stuff yet nothing really laughing. The humor is rather strange because there's an older man (ward Bond) not wanting to marry an "old woman" of 23-years because he likes his 13-year-old current wife. We have humor about one of the Lester sons (William Tracy) who is so crazy and out of control that you can't help but think he's retarded and the film tries to get laughs off of this. We have the young Lester daughter (Gene Tierney) lusting after the older man with a lot of sexual innuendo. This redneck family is just so weird that you can't help but be slightly put off by them and the fact that the film is trying for laughs just makes some of it even stranger. The one major saving grace is the performance by Grapewin who really is marvelous here. His old-time redneck is spot on with the dialogue delivery and body movements that there's no doubt the character will ever leave your mind once you've seen it. Supporting players like Elizabeth Patterson and Dana Andrews come off pretty well but the same can't be said for Tierney who really looks bad here. She just isn't right for the role and she comes off looking like she's really struggling to do something with it. Ford's direction isn't all that bad but there's a reason this film isn't really that well-known or talked about when people discuss his work.

Once lucrative Tobacco Road, which ran down to Augusta, Georgia, has become poverty stricken as credit for seed and fertilizer has dried up and the fields have gone fallow. The impact of the economic catastrophe has left the Tobacco Road farmers in a state of terminal shock. With the Jeeter family as the main protagonists, specifically Pa Jeeter, you have to wonder whether these people are naturally lazy or their laziness is a result of their hopeless economic plight. Why work if you're going to get thrown off the land anyway? In any event, any desire to get ahead seems to have been long lost. Since John Ford directed the film, Ford's Jeeters make an interesting comparison with his Joads from the Grapes of Wrath. I doubt if the Jeeters connect with audiences as well as the Joads, though they have their own sort of bizarre charm.