Cross Creek - Ich kämpfe um meine Freiheit

There's a lot in Cross Creek that's excellent. Several fascinating performances create well-honed characterizations of complex, sometimes-likable characters.

The visuals are beautiful, mostly shot on location in Cross Creek. It certainly evokes this part of Florida. (I grew up about 25 miles from the setting.) Some negatives lower my rating. But despite these, I still highly recommend the film.

Though many like the score, I found it mostly sappy, the only exceptions being the music created by the characters.

Summer never seems to come. Once we see MKR wipe her brow. We get no sense of the oppression of the summer heat and humidity.

But likewise, winter never seems to come. For goodness sake, when you're lighting fires to protect orange trees, that's because it's FREEZING! Those orange trees won't be hurt above about 25F. And freezing weather in Florida is normally accompanied by wind. This may not seem like much to those who live farther north, but it requires more serious clothing than most of the characters don. Yet none seem to notice that it's cold. And MKR's house wouldn't have been so well heated that she could sleep in that weather with only light clothes and covers.

It never gets muddy. The movie shows some torrential downpours, yet when the characters get back out on the roads and paths, it's all dry and neat. That doesn't happen in the swamp.

And it never seems to get buggy. We hear a couple of mentions of mosquitoes but mostly they don't seem like a big problem. People just sit and walk around with no sign that they notice.

Novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings took to the backwoods of Florida in 1927 to work on her literary projects.

She left behind a husband who was unwilling to relocate, and fashioned a working studio in the most rural of southern locations.

The trials she experienced, both creatively and physically, are depicted in this slow-moving, yet well-intentioned enactment.

Filmed in lovely Technicolor in Marion and Alachna Counties, Florida by John Alonzo, to the accompaniment of a lush score by Leonard Roseman, the movie attempts to capture Rawling's varied experiences in pursuit of her writing goals.

Like many films of true-to-life creative artists, one has little factual evidence as to the accuracy of this tale. The challenges Rawlings faced in attempting to first write her "Gothic novel" and getting rejected by a publisher, are carefully acted out.

Only when she changes her subject to that which she is actually experiencing there in Florida does her publisher accept the manuscript.

Since there's not much dramatic about a writer "pecking away" at a typewriter, the script finds other things to depict. When a local girl has an emotional "turn" involving a pet deer, and when the focus is on our heroine's saving her farm crops from devastation, another plot begins to be recalled.

One realizes this is the story of the woman who finally wrote the beloved family classic, "The Yearling."

The film version of that novel, after a failed attempt in the early forties with Spencer Tracy, was finally brought to the screen in 1946 by Director Clarence Brown, with Gregory Peck. That movie captures the essence of Rawlings' work, again in a beautiful Florida setting.

"Cross Creek" may perhaps appear to lack focus or be too deliberately paced for some tastes. At the same time, it has its heart in the right place in expressing Rawlings' unusual "artist retreat," as well as her steadfast dedication to her craft.

For those who think writing is easy, this may be a stark awakening as to the tenacity it often takes to birth a respectable literary work.

'Cross Creek' (1983) The story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her life in the backwoods Florida town of Cross Creek after moving there from New York in the 1930's to continue her writing. I have been a visitor to her home in Cross Creek and even today the area looks like it probably did 60 years ago. Mary Steenburgen does a nice job as the independent, hard drinking Rawlings and Peter Coyote is fine as Norton Baskin, who eventually became her husband. Nicely photographed with a lovely musical score, 'Cross Creek'is a slow, easy going movie and the viewer will enjoy the people in Ms. Rawlings life, particularly the always steady Rip Torn and the late Dana Hill. An enjoyable experience.

I was inspired to revisit this classic after seeing Mary Steenburgen in Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell. McDowell had a small part in this film also as Rawlings' publisher.

Eighty years ago, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings gave up everything to move to Florida and write. She went as far away from everything as you could go. In the land of orange groves, cypress trees, and wildlife abundant, she found the inspiration she needed. This is her story.

It is peppered with colorful characters that lived in the backwoods of Florida, a place that hardly exists anymore with all the development. It featured outstanding performances by Rip Torn as her neighbor, Peter Coyote as the one who was trying to win her heart, Dana Hill as the young girl that inspired "The Yearling," and Alfre Woodard in one of her first roles.

Torn and Woodard got Oscar nominations for their performances.

One of the most impressive features of the film, other than showing the beauty of Florida that is long gone, is the respect shown for the land by Rawlings. Any Native American would be proud of her respect for the land.

It is an inspirational family film that is worth revisiting over and over.

In 1928, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Mary Steenburgen) in her early 30s moves to a blindly bought orange grove near the hamlet of Cross Creek, in northern Florida, which is located on a strip of land between two large lakes (Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake). There she hopes to find the peace and privacy to launch her writing career. Peter Coyote plays a hotel owner from a nearby town that becomes fascinated by Marjorie while Alfre Woodard plays her maid. Rip Torn is on hand as an eccentric backwoodsman with Dana Hill appearing as his daughter who befriends a fawn.

"Cross Creek" (1983) is a historical drama about the famous author of "The Yearling"; it's also part wilderness drama. Shot on location in gorgeous Alachua & Marion Counties, the film's worth watching just for the remote Floridian lushness. The theme is to die for as Marjorie DECIDES what she wants to do and then boldly (or stubbornly) DOES IT, come what may. Her first two short stories were published in 1931 and "The Yearling" in 1938, which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was made into a movie in 1946.

The boggy locations are similar to those in "Frogs" (1972) and "Swamp Thing" (1982) while the topic and themes are reminiscent of "The Whole Wide World" (1996) and "Sounder" (1972). If you favor the latter two movies and appreciate the locations of the former two, you'll enjoy "Cross Creek."

The movie runs 2 hours, 7 minutes.

GRADE: B/B+