A Hollywood Fraud

"Our Vines Have Tender Grapes" has been applauded by the critics in the daily press and has drawn large audiences, but I believe that this is due solely to the popularity of Margaret O'Brien and the amusing character, seven-year-old Butch Jenkins, her leading man. Assessing this film by critical standards, I conclude that it is a poorly conceived fraud, its philosophy as phoney as the numerous painted canvas backdrops of cloudy skies and giant barns that are used in it.

The people in this film are set up to be admired. Yet I did not see the farmer's wife read a line of a book. She appears tending the kids, in the kitchen, or in the Church: she is the ideal woman! And, at the beginning of the film, a mentally backward child is introduced, Ingeborg, who is maltreated by her father. The glamorous schoolmarm of the settlement makes one attempt to get her to school, and then the film leaves this subject, until, later, we see the girl's funeral cortege. It appears that in American country towns it is taken for granted that a backward child should be beaten, ignored, and die young. But "death is for grown-ups to worry about" sighs the farmer's wife. So it goes on. The technique might be described as "polished" but quite uninspired. At least I expected to see some fine photography of the Wisconsin countryside, but it is a studio film with tedious shots of the actor seated in fake motor-cars with flat backgrounds oscillating behind them, overworked to the limit.