THE YEARLING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 24

THE YEARLING

| (M-G-M)

N this long but simple story about a small boy and his pet deer and the way the lad faces up to the first cruel responsibilities of manhood the emo-

) tional colour needed to be applied with | a touch as light as a feather. Unfortunately it has too often been laid on with a trowel. So has the Gorgeous Technicolour, which continually seeks to improve on nature when depicting the backwoods country of 19th Century Florida. Yet in spite of this defect-and particularly in spite of that infernal "heavenly choir" which spoils several fine moments by caterwauling even more inappropriately than usual-this is a film of considerable charm, and one which children should enjoy at least as much as adults. It manages substantially to overcome its handicaps because, in the first place, it is tailored from the good, home-spun material of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s novel, and even the fancy trimmings cannot hide the quality of the cloth; in the second place because the producer (Sidney Franklin) jand the director (Clarence Brown), though seduced frequently by the lush allure of technicolour and a sentimental script, remained faithful in the main to the spirit of the piece; and in the third place, and most importantly, because the film has the benefit of three fine performances. The small boy, Jody, is played by Claude Jarman with that blend of un- _ affected, endearing sincerity and technical skill which one frequently finds in child-stars who haven’t yet had their blootn rubbed off by Hollywood. Jody’s bright-eyed wonder at what he sees in the woods around his home, his friendship with the crippled lad, Fodderwing, his taming of the motherless fawn and his love for it, his horror, bitterness, and eventual resignation when he is forced to kill his beloved pet because it is ruining the family crops -all this is expertly and often very movingly protrayed. The lad’s relationship with his father (Gregory Peck) is also developed with unusual sensitivity, and with a degree of warm understanding on Peck’s part which marks him as much more than just a handsome matinee-idol. He is, perhaps, a shade too glamorous for the part, and so is Jane Wyman as the mother (who, having buried three children in infancy, is afraid to love her surviving son too much); but between the three of them these players create a sense of family life which is rather rare on the screen. Life in the backwoods provides its, adventures, too--a most exciting bearhunt, a near-fatal encounter with a snake, a feud with some neighbours. Nature also takes a hand and turns on a rainstorm which ruins the crops; but at this and other points the technicolour cameras and that infernal choir get in the way and turn The Yearling into a glossy but feeble imitation of parts of The Southerner. However, it could fairly be argued that it is largely because the director and cast do so often | succeed in capturing the delicate and

elusive charm of the story that these descents into vulgarity are so painfully obvious.