Based on Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel of the same name, Anthony Mann's God's Little Acre is about gold fever. A man in Georgia dirt farming country thinks gold lies on his land, despite the fact that he's never found any in fifteen years of digging. He won't get a dowser for the task because his methods are scientific. Of course a dowser who happens to be an albino is a different story.
This is an extraordinarily weird movie to watch. It's well-cast and well-acted, from Robert Ryan's gold-crazed but decent paterfamilias on down. The cinematography is also quite good, establishing a solid Southern Gothic feel, although I don't know whether it was shot on location or in Hollywood. But it's rather nonsensical, repetitive in some aspects and undercooked in others.
It's also bizarrely horny, straining at the edges of the production codes. Some of the results are questionable. Like, early on, a fledgling politician played by Buddy Hackett(!) finds his lady-friend lolling outside in a bathtub. She tells him to pump more water into her bath, and he handles the pump in a manner that's not so much suggestive as confessional. The scene is pure saltpeter.
2 comments:
Not being familiar with the novel or the movie, I couldn't understand why a farmer in Georgia expected to find gold in a part of the country that's never been known as a source for that metal. When I learned he was searching for buried treasure it made more sense. Erskine Calder got a lot of mileage writing about the poverty stricken southern states.
Since it's one of those rare cases when the Wikipedia article about the movie doesn't mention where it was filmed I did a search for that too. It turns out it was filmed in Stockton, CA with the reason noted in this gossipy article from the Atlanta Chronicle.
The movie trailer did show a bit of the suggestive scene when Buddy Hackett was pumping water into the bathtub. Having him play a politician definitely deserves the exclamation mark. Then there was Michael Landon (aka Little Joe Cartwright) as the albino and Tina Louise (aka Ginger) as the sexpot - no surprise there.
Overall, it sounds to have been a pretty unusual and entertaining evening you had there.
I'm not familiar with the novel either, other than having come across the title. In fact I thus far haven't read anything by Erskine Caldwell, although I'm a bit curious now. The buried treasure thing is mentioned, but only near the end of the movie. It seems to me that he actually did think there was a never-suspected vein of gold under his land.
Interesting article. So it seems like they wanted to film in Georgia, or at least Caldwell wanted that, but local objections stopped them. That's not just a Southern thing. There was some controversy in Little Compton over the filming of The Witches of Eastwick. Which also turned out not being very good if I remember right.
Landon's part is interesting. It's before he became a beloved household name, and the character isn't like his famous TV characters, but it's weird rather than dark. Another part of the ensemble is Jack Lord (Det. McGarrett), as Tina Louise's husband, who suspects her of preferring Aldo Ray. To be fair he's mostly right.
It's a movie that sticks in the brain for a while, that's for sure.
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