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The titular nickname fits the rural chap (Buck Jones), a close-up insert of molasses dribbling over a stack of pancakes illustrates his general tempo. He's introduced napping with cobwebs growing out of the soles of his shoes, his body later bends into a "V" to accommodate the curve of the tree on which he snoozes. Not lazy, maintains Mama (Edythe Chapman), "just tired from growin' too fast." The vegetative husk houses a noble soul, he rescues the young widow (ZaSu Pitts) from drowning and adopts her baby to avoid her mother (Emily Fitzroy), "a woman so hard to please that even her guardian angel fell down on the job." The maiden is forced to marry the local fancy-pants (William Bailey) and withers away from heartbreak, her sister (Jane Novak) breaks her courtship with the protagonist and slides into spinsterhood. Years pass, as a child (Virginia Marshall) the foundling is shunned by the community (like Bresson's Mouchette, she keeps a tiny slingshot at the ready), then blooms into a belle (Madge Bellamy). Lost moments and unfinished business: "Remind me to fix that gate when I get back!" A gorgeous Frank Borzage vision, a sustained modulation from Mark Twain into Chekhov. The war away from home is compressed into a comic skit, a rifle replaces the fishing pole in the doughboy's hands and he becomes an accidental hero after capturing an enemy battalion by sheer luck. He returns grayish and with a different view of the lass he raised, she's too busy with a beau (Leslie Fenton) to notice her guardian's newfound desire. People miss opportunities, nurse secrets and see the world pass by outside the window, a portrait of thwarted lives miraculously free of bitterness. (Ozu in particular seems to have absorbed it thoroughly.) It finishes back in the river, with a joke to keep despair at bay. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |