Virginia

I saw this film around the age of 7 (1977), shown on late-night TV (my, those were the days when you could REALLY see the classics! TV is not quite as satisfying today....), and my fuzzy memory tells me that it features a quasi-sappy romance between the two main characters. I loved it at the time, and would very much love to see it again, to see just how good (or rotten) my taste-level was (is).

This is a great film - it doesn't matter that the theme somewhat reminds you of another Southern-based film - or that characters are loosely similar to that other film - what matters is that my grandparents were extras in the picture at the very beginning! Grandma & Grandpa Hurt lived in Howardsville, Virginia (and so did my Father's parents, Grandma & Grandpa Peters) and that station was chosen to be the mythical Fairville, Virginia (over another nearby town to that town's chagrin). My Father's grandparents (Peters) are standing behind Fred MacMurray on the station platform as the train arrives in the opening sequence. My grandfather Hurt was off camera behind the same scene! Okay, so my Mother & Father told me this story - over and over again! But because of that story, my interest in film-making was kindled. I've found a copy of the film (on DVD no less!) but I'm still looking for a "clean" copy of the film or a set of 'reels' from a theater. It's a great film for sitting in front of the fireplace with a warm cup of cocoa and watching. (I also have one copy of a photo from my aunt Eleanor that was taken during a break in shooting that has cast and crew in it.)

While "Virginia" was filmed in Technicolor, you'd never believe it if you see the copy floating around on YouTube! It's completely washed out and all the colors look like sepia. I do hope there's a better copy available than this one.

Charlotte Dunterry (Madeliene Carrol) is returning to her ancestral home in Virginia. Why she has a British accent and grew up no where near the South seemed odd. But was even odder was what happened next. When she arrived at the old plantation, she finds that the black people NEVER left the place because they adored their white masters so much. In fact, with no Dunterrys there...they just waited....and waited. Apparently, these folks resented the abolition of slavery...and people watching it today will likely be annoyed or confused by bizarro view of slavery!! Add to that the words used to describe these folks and you have a recipe for a heart attack for the easily offended!

In addition to presenting a ridiculous view of the South, the movie has to do with Charlotte's love life. After all, she has two men who adore her...but since it's a movie, you know something is going to prevent her from getting the right one until the story ends! Will she end up with young Sterling Hayden or Fred MacMurray? This portion of the story is mildly interesting...too bad it's burdened with the crazy pro-slavery theme!

This film not only is a bad history lesson, but it is simply one cliche after another...and quite formulaic. Again and again, I predicted exactly what would happen next because of this. Overall, a poorly written and rather silly picture.

Madeleine Carroll is broke and alone, so she comes back to the Virginia plantation she was born on and now owns, where she meets neighbor Fred MacMurray. His family plantation was repossessed by the bank when he was ten, and now is owned by rich Yankee Sterling Hayden (in his first movie) as a vacation home. As the movie progresses, Miss Carroll learns about the proud tradition of the decayed gentry of Virginia, and she and MacMurray fall in love. He, however, has a wife who fled Virginia five years earlier, leaving him to care for their daughter. Everyone in Virginia and Europe, whither she fled, knows about her and her wild ways, made the worse for never being specified.

The copy I saw was a poor one, derived from what I guess is an old VHS tape, and the undoubtedly once handsome Technicolor colorwork by Bert Glennon and William Skall has faded to blocky wisps. What remains is a typical romantic romantic comedy.

I could not watch this without thinking of the recent controversy over the University of Bowling Green deciding that Lilian Gish's participation in D.W. Griffith THE BIRTH OF A NATION rendered her name unfit to be placed on the Film scholarship and building she endowed when alive and in her will -- although there's been no mention of returning the money; as Vespasian said of the urine tax, "pecunia non olet". This one made my teeth clench, with Louise Beavers saying that freedom meant being alone, while slavery meant people cared; and blind Leigh Whipper creeping back from the prison he had been in for three quarters of a century, for killing a Yankee who was trying to kill Miss Carroll's grandfather, so he could die at home. Even the Civil War gets a calm consideration; when asked about slavery, Mr. MacMurray insists that the Emancipation Proclamation was simply a shrewd move in international politics.

As far as I can tell, everyone involved in this movie is dead, even Carolyn Lee, who played Mr. MacMurray's daughter. Good thing, too, considering what's happened to Miss Gish's name. No one in the movie seems to disapprove of the social situations of Virginia in what is offered as a contemporary portrait in the neighborhood of Manassas, except for Marie Wilson, and she's present as the comic, vulgarly rich Yankee who bought herself an aristocratic southern husband who's drinking himself to death for the shame of it. I suppose that's what happens when your standards are higher than those of an emperor.

It's a highly competently made movie intended to tread in the profitable footsteps of GONE WITH THE WIND. There's little doubt in my mind that it played very well in the Whites-Only downtown movie palaces that Paramount owned throughout the South.

There is a fascination in watching old films that have become documentaries of past eras themselves. When I first began to watch 'Virginia' I became spellbound by the blithe way stereotypes were presented and accepted without question. Then I began to judge it from my own perspective now in 2023. Finally I came to a realization that while we cannot help the environment in which we were raised there are certain universal injustices that must be acknowledged by any thinking person. It is possible to be a caring, white landowner who feels affection and some responsibility for non white employees. It is not possible to refuse to see the equality and superiority of any person who honestly makes a success of life. Equally it is not possible to ignore the impediments put in front of non white Americans to intentionally make it extremely difficult for them to achieve success: in education, business, land ownership, etc.

When Fred MacMurray's character says, "The War Wasn't Fought over Slavery", and then goes on to say that the Emancipation Proclamation, since it wasn't enacted until 1863, was a political afterthought, I had to stop the film and listen again. His explanation as to why he thinks the Civil War should not be considered as the direct result of slavery, false as it is, is fascinating. You still hear that same statement but I had never heard anyone try to prove it by using the Emancipation Proclamation.

So, I give this film 5 stars because it is an excellent view into how the minds of Civil War apologists work, in real time. II could not give it more because some of its conclusions are horrifying. Ts casual racism, in a few different forms, both southern and northern, is worth investigation as well. The fact that in 1941 anyone could use racially charged epithets without pause and assume a completely different way of speaking to someone, based solely upon their color of skin, should elicit concern from anyone who watches it.