Judge Priest

Judge Priest (1934)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Wonderful film has Will Rogers playing the title role who has his own way of making justice prevail. Set in a small Kentucky town, the judge must battle a wide range of subjects but all of them seem to center around a mysterious man who is charged with assault. I wasn't too thrilled with the previous Rogers/Ford film that I watched but this one here hits all the right marks. Ford's love of Southern loyalty is certainly on full display from start to finish but he also paints a film that isn't really about anything yet it's about everything. Ford paints a terrific and authentic view of the South and even manages to work other items in like patriotic war battles and moving on in time. I think some of the best moments happen between Rogers and a black man named Jeff (Stepin Fetchit) who the judge saved from being hung. The two share several scenes together and their relationship comes off very sweet and human. The performances are all extremely good with Rogers leading the way as the soft spoken judge. Tom Brown and Anita Louise are also very good as Rogers' nephew and his girlfriend. The scene stealer comes from Henry B. Walthall who plays a Reverend with a secret past that comes out during the final courtroom scene. It's forgotten today that at one time Walthall was considered one of the greatest actors out there and his performance here is very thrilling and certainly grabs ones attention.

John Ford adopts and works within the conventions of this homespun genre. As he did with the genre of every film he made. Yes, racial stereotyping -- but Ford knew it was, and let you see it for what it was. Yes, sentimental and corny, but knowing and loving that way, presenting it for what you the viewer want to make of it.

After seventy years, still so funny, so affectionate, so insightful. And topical for 2003: is there any better depiction of populist politics, or expression of faith in the democratic mystery of the common man?

The art that conceals art. Try to see it on a film-projected screen. I'm off to look at THE SUN SHINES BR

In spite of the bonfires war had finished however the ashes and sequels still remain.The war between the states-the Union and Confederacy-was over but its tragedies and comedies haunted every grown man's mind.Taken from the Irvin S. Cobb stories which after main title picture says the following :¨The events were swapped took deep root in my memory and are familiar ghost of my boyhood.There was one man ¨Down Yonder¨I came specially to admire for he seemed typical of the tolerance of that day and the wisdom of that almost vanished generation.I called Judge Priest and I tried to draw reasonably fair likeness of him and his neighbors and the town in which he lived¨.

The film deals a southern Judge(Will Rogers) with good humor ,common sense,jingoist and with a heart of gold who makes many goods deeds,helping to unfortunates and hapless and doing as matchmaker of his nephew(T.Brown) with a beautiful young(Anita Louise).The film is well set during the reconstruction although is eventually hampered by racist stereotypes on the black people characterizations.Biggest film are the musical duet among Will Rogers and Hattie McDaniel and the jokes about the spitting on the pot during trial court celebration. Besides appears Hattie McDaniel in her second greatest role of her career,the first was, of course,Mammy in ¨Gone with the wind¨,she is in a number of ways,superior to most of the white folk surrounding her.She was the first African-American to win an Academy Award.She became the first African-American to attend the Academy Award as a guest,not a servant. Musical direction is by Cryl Mockridge who along with Dudley Nichols are habituals in John Ford movies.A worst remake was realized by Ford's own in 1953¨The sun shines bright¨ with Charles Winninger with little success. Motion picture will like to cinema classics moviegoers

There's quite a lot to recommend this one, the John Ford touches mainly. The way the scenes are arranged, the attention to detail are his trademarks. His direction is tight, focused, the actors deliver their lines in a believable, realistic manner. Nothing stagy about this. As for the actors they performed pretty much as expected. Will Rogers was his usual self, not the greatest of thespians but entertaining nonetheless. Anita Louise was simply delicious. I don't think I've ever seen her in better form and I credit Ford for extracting that performance as well as Tom Brown's who managed to keep his earnestness and wide-eyed innocence under check. Even stone-faced David Landau and bombastic Berton Churchill managed to give their stereotypical parts some originality.

My ambivalence is about the overt racism here, even granting the film's time frame and the period in our history it depicts. The least of it is that two of the central characters, Hattie McDaniel and Stepin Fetchit, are listed last in the credits, after Juror No. 12, whose only contribution was hitting the spittoon during the court scenes. Frankly it was difficult to watch despite some genuine tender scenes between the Rogers character and his servants. The one that stands out has him and McDaniel singing an impromptu spiritual and that one alone is worth the price of admission. The judge's relationship with the Fetchit character is much more problematic, even granting the "Coon" persona that Fetchit employed so successfully in his career he became a millionaire. There were just too many instances of the judge ordering him about just for the sake of it. It's painful to consider how humiliating it must have been for these two talented professionals to adopt their screen personae in order to earn a living.

I know I'm judging this film by 21st century standards, seventy-seven years after its release and if nothing else one might say that it exposed our country's shameful past, let the sunlight in on our deep, dark, secret. And in all fairness this is a film about southerners right after they had lost the Civil War. One can't really expect them to feel and express any remorse. People don't work that way. So from that angle I have no qualms. If anything I suspect the presentation of that society was probably mostly accurate. But I wonder at the motivations of the society that felt the need to make a film such as this, about a society that existed seventy years prior. And given Ford's sympathetic, realistic, treatment of American Indians in his later Westerns I wonder if he wasn't making just that point.

'30's comedies aren't exactly known for their subtlety and they mostly consist out of physical humor. This movie forms a great and wonderful exception to this.

This is one great subtle comedy that is mostly funny thanks to its very amusing and extreme stereotyped characters. It of course also really helps that they are being portrayed by some really great actors and are being directed by one great director; John Ford.

Will Rogers was totally great in his role. He seemed very natural with his acting but at the same time managed to play his character in a comical way. He was a greatly talented comedy actor, who was already a popular one during the silent era. He would had continued to play many more comical roles I'm sure, had he not died one year after this movie, in a plane crash piloted by the one-eyed pioneer aviator Wiley Post. Hattie McDaniel also does in this movie what she is best known for, playing a likable maid role. She is best known for her Acedemy Award winning role in "Gone with the Wind", which also made her the first black actor winning the great award.

Even though John Ford began directing movies as early as 1917, it wasn't until the '30's that his career really took off and he gained a real big celebrity status. He also isn't best known for comedies but mostly for his western's, often starring John Wayne. Till this date he is still the director with the most Academy Awards for best directing (4 of them). I think that says already enough about the qualities of this man. With this movie he also really seemed ahead of its time, by picking an all different and very humble approach of the story and comedy.

The story is actually quite simple but oh so great. It actually is quite well layered, even though the movie its simplicity might make you overlook this. It features lots of different element involving the characters in this movie, on both the comical as well as the more dramatic level. I also especially really like how the judge tries to hook up his cousin with his neighbor girl.

The movie also truly benefits from its typical southern atmosphere. The movie is set in a southern town, which shows in the movie its characters, their accents and just overall atmosphere of the entire movie.

This movie was a great pleasant surprise!

9/10

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