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Buñuel's Las Hurdes is a very funny film, John Ford understands that in this monstrous slapstick pendant of The Grapes of Wrath. How the other half lives, in dilapidated Georgia to be exact, amid belted hymns and half-bitten turnips. The land is barren but it's all the rustic patriarch (Charley Grapewin) has, one hundred dollars is all that stands between him and the poor farm. "A whoopin' bad fix and no foolin'," no help from a gallery of grotesques, the caterwauling religionist (Marjorie Rambeau) and the screeching cretin (William Tracy) have their own base urges to chase. The kids are either away or buried in the field, Ma (Elizabeth Patterson) murmurs, "I must have a whole lot of grandchildren somewhere." (Gene Tierney's barefoot nymph is the one who stayed behind, crawling in the dirt to inflame Ward Bond as her lunkheaded brother-in-law.) "A little sinnin' in general" is just the thing for the rabid atmosphere of carnality and sloth, Ford's most lacerating, Rabelaisian work. The ancient jalopy sputters along on burst wheels, the brand-new roadster is systematically demolished until it's an overturned carcass in a ditch, the raucous clod lies blessedly punched out next to it. The ritual of a broken front porch, the luxury of a night at the hotel ("What do you think of that—different rooms for different people"). Vaudeville darkens into poignancy, the codger leaves the shack for one last ride and suddenly it's a foreglimpse of Umberto D. "The good Lord certainly looks out after the poor." Buñuel returns the compliment with The Young One. With Dana Andrews, Slim Summerville, Grant Mitchell, Zeffie Tilbury, Russell Simpson, Charles Halton, and Spencer Charters. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |