The Southerner (1945)

(The rural American south, roughly contemporary)
IMDb

Director Jean Renoir considered this uneven, episodic story of a tenant family struggling to start their own farm, to be the highlight of his American exile period. Attempting to tap into a deep vain of Americana and mythologization of the protestant work ethic, Renoir comes up short in a number of respects. First off, while something can be said for the overwhelming 'close to the earth' aspects of the story, both in terms of its relative simplicity and evocation of the rural ethos, it's still mostly pretty dull stuff. Renoir made some of the finest films to ever come out of Europe, and while his characters in films like The Grand Illusion might sometimes fall into type, they never-the-less always remained fully realized characters. That extent of deep characterization felt noticeably lacking in this film, with leads Zachary Scott and Betty Field exuding little more then a pleasant banality, even after going through excessive hardships. The Beulah Bondi character, who I think was suppose to be charmingly cranky, was really just whinny and annoying. Even Normon Lloyd (man of one of the all time great creepy faces) was waisted. I suspect this features winning of the Best Picture Award at the Venice Film festival, had more to do with a general respect for Renior (mostly well deserved), and their being recently liberated by the Americans, then with its own merits. Granted time may have diminished the impact of the film, which was very much unlike the standard studio output of its era.