The Shepherd of the Hills

The Henry Hathaway-directed 1941 Shepherd Of the Hills is worth seeing if for nothing else its color, which is as glorious and gorgeous as one will find in a film. Each outdoor shot is like a landscape painting. Along with Gone With the Wind and The Four Feathers, this is the finest use of color I have seen in a movie, and it should be used as a textbook on how to shoot a film in color. Otherwise, the picture is just a pleasing and old-fashioned revenge tale, adapted from a now forgotten novel, and set in the Ozark Mountains at about the turn of the twentieth century. It is nicely written in the idiom of the mountain folk, and features John Wayne in an early, rare non-western role, which he handles proficiently. Betty Field is his spunky love interest in what would now be an Amy Madigan part. Miss Field is lovely in a non-conventional way; she shines as never before or since. The combination of her quiet, almost mousy beauty in an otherwise talky, assertive role is fascinating to watch. Also on hand are Beulah Bondi, Ward Bond, Marc Lawrence, who gives an amazing performance, and Harry Carey, whose pleasantness and plainness I find tiring, though I suppose he's well-cast. There's a ritualistic feeling to the film, with its clearly defined notions of good and evil, the almost formally informal dialect the characters use, the leisurely, strolling pace by which the story unfolds, all contribute to its pastoral quality. The chief problem is that there's no suspense. One senses early on how the thing is going to end, and the characters behave as one would expect.

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, the film follows Daniel Howitt (Harry Carey), a stranger in town who is looking to buy some land. He befriends Sammy Lane (Betty Field), who tries to help him navigate his way around the peculiar locals, such as the moonshiner family ruled over by the disagreeable Aunt Mollie (Beulah Bondi). One of Mollie's boys is Matt Matthews (John Wayne) who doesn't take kindly to this newcomer trying to take land that used to belong to Matt's long-dead mother.

This was John Wayne's first color film, and it would make a great double bill with 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. The cast is very good, from Carey as the world-weary gunslinger looking to settle accounts, to Betty Field as a backwoods gal pining for more out of life. Beulah Bondi is terrifically witchy, but ultimately more than a cartoon, displaying real character depth by the shocking ending. The biggest surprise to me was Marc Lawrence. Most classic movie fans will recognize the face if not the name, a pock-marked weasally countenance who played dozens of gangsters and low-lifes from the 1930's through the 1990's. Here he plays a slow witted man-child, slightly deformed and more pitiful than menacing. It's a performance quite unlike anything I'd seen from him before, and he was excellent. If not for the slight cop-out ending, I would have rated this even higher.

Beneath the somewhat awkward narrative lies an affecting spiritual parable, about hate and redemption. The hatred Matt (Wayne) and his aunt Mollie (Bondi) have towards Matt's dead father is poisoning their lives and those lives around them. Never mind that they don't know the details surrounding the father's absence while Matt's mother and Mollie's sister dies alone and unattended. Now Matt has sworn a blood oath to kill his father whom he's surprisingly never seen, having been adopted instead into Mollie's family. Meanwhile, Mollie spews venom around her household that's affected her husband and everyone else.

Then, into this backwoods den arrives a mysterious stranger Howitt (Carey) with a load of money and city ways. He doesn't preach any kind of redeeming sermon. Instead, he selflessly ministers to the sick, puts moonshiners to work at a better wage, and buys Matt's now abandoned cabin site for an outlandish price. He's got "good man" written all over him. In short, he's a transformative figure to all but Mollie and Matt who persist in their poisonous grudge.

It's easy to see Howitt as a religious symbol though the movie's spirituality is pretty much limited to revealing beams of sunlight from above. (Rather surprisingly, no mention is made of biblical religion among Ozark folks known for their literalist beliefs.)

But, to me, the real spiritual symbol is the apparent simpleton, Pete (Lawrence), one of Mollie's sons. The story is that he was normal until a bolt of lightning struck him at the same time Matt's mother died. Now, I suspect the story and its timing suggest some kind of mysterious passage from dying mother to nephew Pete. It appears, however, to be a curse on Pete, since from then on he behaves like a grunting primitive, unable to speak coherently.

But consider two things. It's Pete's fateful struggle with Mollie, his mother, that finally forces her to consider the error of her ways, something not even Howitt has been able to achieve. Second, is the movie's central scene, at least in my little book. That's the powerfully moving shot of Pete alone and wordlessly picking at motes amid a glowing beam of sunlight through a small window. The message seems clear. Pete alone is in contact with something more ethereal than the Ozarks and moonshine or even Howitt. Whatever that communion is must remain both symbolic and mysterious. I also expect it's no accident that the movie cast the darkly colored Mark Lawrence in the role since he looks nothing like the rest of Mollie's family.

Now, I'm neither particularly religious nor spiritual. But I do appreciate this aspect of the film, which I believe is both intelligently and artistically implied.

The movie itself is a photogenic marvel as others point out. The colors are so lush I hardly recognized the Big Bear locations, where as an LA resident, I used to hike. Moreover, I really like the way the movie refuses to glamorize the casting of Sammy, the ingénue. Betty Field is perfect for the part, with her average looks but uncommon liveliness. She injects real spark into the proceedings. Carey too is well chosen. With his easy smile and affable manner, he wins us over quickly, making his showdown in the meadow with Matt something of a shocker. Somehow, it's odd seeing Wayne without a cowboy hat and with his real hair. Still, he's fine in the part, showing why he's generally underrated as an actor. I guess my only complaint is with Bondi who spreads the bile on pretty thickly. Then again, maybe that's what it takes in a family with a bunch of strapping roughnecks.

All in all, the movie's something of a sleeper, even though it never made it into Wayne's canon of classics, probably because Wayne is not the central character, despite the poster depiction. Too bad. Because both the story and the visuals deserve to be better known, inasmuch as the humane message remains as enduring now as it was then.

I just caught this little gem on AMC. I missed the opening credits so I had no idea who directed it. As the film progressed, I was like "This has GOT to be a John Ford film." After all, it features John Wayne, Harry Carey, Ward Bond and lots of wonderful Ford like shots. A wonderfully photographed and directed film. It even has Marjorie Main in a character role that's a total departure from her normal, boisterous parts we all know and expect from this great actress. Then I looked it up here at the IMDb and saw that it was Henry Hathaway's film. I never thought of Hathaway as a bad director by any means, but wow! This simply has the look of a well crafted classic beginning to end. Highly recommended.

A marvelous, if little known, early John Wayne film. There are so many wonderful moments in this film that I can only list a few: Harry Carey splendid as the mysterious man who comes to the Ozarks to purchase a piece of dirt land and settle down, and ends up purchasing Moanin' Meadow. A gorgeous, seamless, seemingly effortless piece of acting.

Betty Field, always in bare feet saying that she nearly stepped in a cloud and reveling in the mud between her bare toes.

Marc Lawrence trying to catch dust motes in a sunbeam coming through a dirty windowpane.

Beulah Bondi making a circle of candles and lamp oil!!

Marjorie Main seeing for the first time in her life.

And John Wayne moving from bewildered and embittered young man with a curse on him, to a man in love who can't express his feeling because of the curse, and finally coming to terms with his real, inner self for the first time in his life.

Anyone who thinks John Wayne could not act, should see The Shepherd of the Hills. He is not only beautiful to look at, but he brings charm, power and sympathy to a very difficult role.