ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Hitchcoc This is a pretty good film with some memorable actors. "Tobacco Road" was a best selling book and later a successful play. Though comedic, the story is rather sad. We have a group of people barely having enough to eat. Because they are not very well educated or have little ambition, their choices are really limited. Jeeter, the main character, is a thief and an opportunist. As is often the case, his peccadilloes only come back to bite him. When he steals, he is too stupid to get away. I watched this movie with my father back ion the fifties and for many years it gave me my impression of what came to be called hillbillies. Of course, these stereotypes were enhanced by the very successful TV comedy, "The Beverly Hillbillies." The movie made me crawl because these people were so shortsighted and so careless and so close to the edge. I never got the humor.

Gooper 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.

LeaBlacks_Balls A family of backwood idiots in South Carolina are evicted from their property by the bank, and do very little to help themselves. Soon the moronic son is married to the local religious zealot and they buy a car and drive around reeking havoc, crashing into almost everything and abusing the car like it's a toy. The patriarch of the family wants to get a loan from the bank so he can plant some crops again, but he's too lazy and shiftless to actually do anything. There's a bunch of weird slapstick and overacting that could put post-Scarface Pacino to shame, mixed with awful maudlin scenes of desperation.This kind of film is typical of that era in American history, where rich, 'enlightened' people gathered to laugh at those less fortunate, be it blacks, Latinos or hicks, in movies filled with stereotypes and cruelty. It's a dated dud that is better off forgotten.

Lechuguilla Dirt poor, elderly Georgia farmer Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) schemes to get some money so that he and his wife Ada (Elizabeth Patterson) can remain at their dilapidated frame house on Tobacco Road, in this Great Depression era story, part comedy, part drama.As country hicks, most of the characters are rather too stereotyped to be realistic. The film's script is very talky, not surprising since the story originated as a stage play. The film's plot varies wildly from slapstick comedy to morose drama. And therein lies the main problem.Rural poverty in the South during the 1930s was no laughing matter. It was an intensely painful and prolonged episode of human misery. I can understand how viewers in those days needed some comic relief, but not in a story about poverty. The hyper-antics of young Dude, the film's comic relief, are extremely annoying. Those scenes dilute the seriousness of the film's underlying theme. And the subplot wherein Dude and Sister Bessie go off together seems like plot filler.Charley Grapewin gives a fine performance in the lead role. But Marjorie Rambeau as Sister Bessie, and William Tracy as Dude overact. Part of this overacting could have been the result of poor film direction.The film's background music runs the gamut from frivolous and nondescript in the comedic scenes to old-time gospel songs like "Shall We Gather At The River" during more serious moments.Given the era in which the film was made, "Tobacco Road" is okay, if you give it some slack. But the story would have been better without the slapstick comedy. In any event, it's a good movie to watch when you're depressed and think things can't get much worse.