A Girl of the Limberlost

I watched quite a few movies like this when I was a kid, but not this one. I only knew about it from a trailer on a VHS from another WonderWorks production. It seemed like a really interesting story. Now having seen it, many years later and after I've developed a sense about what makes a movie good besides the general story, I think it's OK. The basic story is about a girl who lives in 1908 Indiana on a farm with her widowed mother. However, she wants to continue her education and, consequently, develops a friendship with a more free-spirited woman who helps her along in this regard. Generally speaking, the characters were well-developed and well-performed by the cast. There were a couple of faces I recognized: Annette O'Toole (from Superman III) and an actor who appeared in some Matlock episodes. The plot was kind of predictable, as the girl enters into conflict with her mother and adjusts to interacting with city folk, but it still had an emotional truth despite the familiar trappings. It also had a good pace. Being made for television, the filmmaking quality was decent but unspectacular. Lighting and camera-work were adequate, but it was often hard to see detail in the nighttime/darker scenes. And the score was rather uninvolving, even if it never got in the way. I kind of wish I'd seen this earlier in life, because maybe I would have appreciated it more. Still, it made for a good hour and a half spent

The fourth essay at converting Geneva (Gene) Stratton-Porter's most popular novel for the screen, this version conflicts markedly with the original story while yet managing to make a faithful adaptation of the book's pre-Great War era in a visually appealing film, with beautiful southern Oregon locations standing in for the author's eastern Indiana setting. Stratton-Porter is inserted into the scenario as the "Bird-Woman" of the Limberlost Swamp region, here played sensitively by Joanna Cassidy, and the naturalist writer's endeavours with camera, notebooks, and glass photographic plates is accurately rendered, even to a mention of her watercolour tinting for illustrations in a published volume of nature studies, but there are significant alterations in the characters of Elnora Comstock (Heather Fairchild) and her embittered widowed mother Kate (Annette O'Toole) that result in flaws of logic surrounding their actions. Since this product comes from Feature Films For Families, it was possibly deemed discreet to eliminate the important reference to Elnora's father's marital infidelity, but nothing is provided here to replace it in context, while the omission of the neighbouring childless couple, the Sintons, with their supportive counsel of Elnora; and of Phillip, beau of the young farm girl, are unfilled voids. The dramatic act of Kate that results in a climactic clash between mother and daughter is weakly altered and Fairchild's sporadic Valley Girl diction and mannerisms are not harmonious with O'Toole's more accurate dialect, especially since the two have lived only with each other since the girl's birth 16 years prior, but Fairchild nicely interprets Elnora's struggle to balance her desire for self-improvement with her loyalty to her mother and to their tax-endangered farm. Direction is pedestrian, and a minimalist score is nonspecific, but the sets and costumes are splendidly crafted.

To me, it was a great movie that the whole family can sit and watch without being assaulted by Hollywood's warped morals and lack of decency. Why don't they make more movies like this? The mode of dress in that time and patterns were nice. The woodland scenes were beautiful. Ms Fairfield played an excellent role.

In the mid 50's my favorite Aunt Elnora gave me a copy of "Girl of the Limberlost" for my very own and I still have it. I cannot count the many times I was embraced by the rich story of Elnora Comstock's life in the Limberlost swamp.

I wanted so much more from this movie. The story was crippled by its abbreviation. The photography could have been a story in itself. "The Girl of the Limberlost" is as much a story for today as it was when written.

Please, someone - anyone - redo this and make it America's story. Not every great movie needs a comic book hero and massive explosions to be good. Beautiful quiet human stories can be just as good.

Burt Brinkerhoff directed. Annette O'Toole, Heather Fairfield, and Joanna Cassidy star in this delightful film of a 1908 mother and daughter on an Indiana farm. Fairfield is the daughter who goes to high school. She buys books with money from the moths she collects from the Limberlost swamp. Cassidy is the author who pays her for the specimens. O'Toole is the mother withholding affection, because her husband drown in the Limberlost the night Fairfield was born. The photography is evocative of the violin music that the husband played. There is an owl who provides Fairfield with a listener. A homeless boy, Joey, is taken in. Chauncey Leopardi is Fairfield's first high school friend. The film is tops and should be in all family film collections.