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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 1. February 28, 1947

The Southerner

The Southerner

Going to the pictures is so much a business of twisting one or two banal themes that when a masterpiece of production is displayed one's critical faculties are so blunted that full appreciation is well nigh impossible. There is little savouring of the technical virtuosity of good photography, skilful selection of scenes, the blending of contrasting personalities into the framework of the story.

This condition is engendered by a moribund capitalist philosophy whose raison d'etre is individual selfishness. The moving spirit in the film world is the box office. This disharmony results in a false indentification of gain with merit. Lavish spectacles rivalling those of the Arabian Nights are very often the main criteria of a picture's worth. It often appears that Hollywood has not learned that sheer magnitude is insufficient. Co-existent with this belief is the ridiculous one which insists that the everyday shall be portrayed as life among the upper-bracket bourgeois. John Citizen is, according to screen standards, revealed as an immutable constant resplendent in dinner suit, nonchalantly tossing down whiskies and sodas between sentences and valiantly striving to withstand the daring wiles of Hay's Office Sinners.

In this welter of confusion and peculiar unreality the screening of the struggles and pursuits of the average individual is an outstanding achievement. The Southerner attempts to do this and makes a good contribution to knowledge on contemporary economic disorders. Apart from the human interest attached to the story of the Tuckers hardships the film is of particular interest in that it reveals the conditions under which the poor white and negro worker eke out a precarious existence under a degrading form of slavery. Allegedly freedom and private enterprise! The Southerner is a blurred glimpse into the lives of people in the cotton lands of the States. It is a tale of people tottering on the breadline between starvation and bare subsistence. This story of real life seems quite bizarre and fantastic by comparison with current movie entertainment. In this respect the hard bitten, senile grandmother soured by a fruitless struggle against a pitiless nature, though a vivid character, nevertheless jars trie senses because of her strangeness on the screen. A refreshing factor in this picture is the complete absence of jingoism and false sentiment. The strain under which the producer must have been labouring hot to break forth into current clinches is shown by one venial lapse. It occurred in the rather melodramatic scene where Tucker's neighbour, an embittered old misanthrope, dates him for the pugilist's waltz. That brand-new wickedly gleaming clasp-knife really makes one's eyes bulge and that standard position with the villain astride Tucker's prostrate body with the razor-sharp knife trembling an inch above the heart makes one wonder on the ways of would-be [unclear: murders.] It seems as though they were all issued with knives for their foul purposes from the same chain-store.

Apart from this minor blemish the whole show was characterised by an astonishing attention to the more unpleasant facts of the social organism and a finely balanced restraint in scenes that could very easily have been over-emotionalised.

P. Johansen.