What drew my attention to this film was a throw away line in an episode of the Billy Bob Thornton series 'Goliath'. I like obscure refrences so I looked it up, decided I wanted to see it, and later threw it on the schedule for a 'public domain movie month' on my podcast.
'God's Little Acre' is a 1958 film adaptation of the 1933 Erskin Caldwell novel of the same name. Both film and book have a racey reputation, and it was production code standards that kept the popular novel from being adapted to screen for about a quarter century.
The movie is a kind of hillbilly Payton Place or low rent Tennessee Williams. I was expecting more of the fomer, with the first half of the film being the most interested in titulation, and the latter groping for southern gotheic of social significance, even featuring an abortive labor insurrection.
The two halves of the film never fully gelled together for me, though Robert Ryan does an admirable job of trying to bridge them as the patriarch of a Georgia family that has seen better days. Ty Ty Walden has let the family cotten buisness come to a halt in an obssesive persuit of gold allegedly burried on family land by ancestors a hundred years ago. So desperate is he to find these richs that when a friend suggests, in accordance with folk belief, that he get an albino to divine its location, he and two of his sons abduct one (played by a young Micheal Landon).
The gold plot is there largely for humorous misadventure, most of the story concerns Ty Ty's five grown children, their spouses and/or potential love interests. Central to these relationships is Griselda who is married to Ty Ty's son Buck but desired by most every male in the picture. She is played by Tina Louise (Ginger from 'Gilligan's Island') in her film debut. Her introductory scene in a form fitting dress of shallow fabric is an attention graber, and she follows it up with other attire that while tame by today's standards, conveys a sultryness perhaps more appealing for being mildly subtle.
Griselda's ex lover Bill Thompson (Aldo Ray), who will later lead the abortive factory take over, is married to her sister in law Rosemind (Helena Wescott, doing the most she can with what little screen time she is given). Buck (played by Jack Lord, who like his film wife would also be best known for his role on a 60's born island based TV show, 'Hawaii Five-O') is specious of Bill as regards his wife. The other children consist of a resentful rich widower who lives in town, a third son who is something of a sypher and doesn't say much, and youngest Darlin' Jill (a memorable Fay Spain) who gives Griselda a run for her money as screen tart. She is the object of obsession for the pudgy Pluto Swint, a family friend played by Buddy Hackett, whose only hope of landing the girl seems to be success in a qusadic run for county sheriff.
The film hops around between these stories and Ty Ty's competing drives between gold fever and an understated religious piouty. The various elements of the film work well enough on their own, but as a whole seem somewhat lacking.
The film was directed by Anthony Mann, who is known for some operatic tendencies in his story telling and (along with Alfred Hitchcock) crafting a darker post war image for Jimmy Stewart, in his case through westerns like 'Winchester '73' and 'The Man from Laramie'. The score here is oddly by Elmer Bernstein.
A film most notable for the hodge podge of talents in front and behind the screen, as well as a quasi scandalous reputation that is yes deserved, but still gives less then expected. My biggest critique of the film is probably that it dosen't go whole hog with the naughtiness, though that probably wasn't an option open to it at the time. Also I think not setting it in the depression was a mistake, it's a very 30's story despite some 50's automobiles (though the poorer main characters all drive 30's vintage vehicals), and it just seems off. Still an entertaining picture despite a certain unevenness. **
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