O Clarim da Floresta

I have been watching for some reappearance of this film for many years, with no satisfaction. You see, I saw it as a child, and there are VERY few films that have remained with me from that long ago. (This very day happens to be my 77th birthday).

It is a touching tale involving a favored hunting dog that somehow gets caught in an animal trap and spends a stormy night baying for some help, but unreachable due to the raging storm. At least, that's the way I remember it. When the storm lets up, the anxious searchers who could hear him but could not locate or get to him find his trapped and dead body. It was so movingly done that I have never forgotten its effect on me.

Irv Thomas

Whenever my father would hear the music of a distant, musical hound, he'd say jokingly, "It's the voice of Bugle Ann!" For more than fifty years I've waited to see this movie and learn why it was so memorable for him. Happily TCM televised it today. At first I was afraid it was going to be too slow and rustically sentimental for me, but I stayed with it because it brought back memories of my dad and some of our hunts with hounds in the Midwest. Eventually Barrymore's great courtroom speech about man's most loyal and innocent friend and the haunting voice of Bugle Ann herself brought quiet pleasure, and I shucked off my modern day cynicism long enough to enjoy the wonderfully sentimental ending.

This movie was filmed around my home town of Mendon Missouri. Mostly on the farm of Tom Bash. I believe he financed part of the filming of this picture. He was judge of the eastern district in Missouri in the 20's and Sheriff of Jackson County Mo. in the 30's. He offered to adopt my father Calvin Collins but my father refused because he was told he would have to wear shoes and have to finish his homework before he went fishing. Bash hosted many large hunts on his vast farm and they were attended by many dignitaries including Harry Truman. Lionel Barrymore attended parties at the Bash Ranch aside from being there to make this film.

This movie will stay with you for the rest of your life. I did not see the movie until 2002 on TCM, but the senate speech about the love of a dog quoted in the movie was excerpted in a comic book I read as a boy in the late 50s. I would love to see the movie again. Of course, like many people, I believe that every movie with Lionel Barrymore is a classic on some level. The movie is otherwise pretty much standard fare for the 30s: a low budget film made with contract players. But if you are a lover of animals, this movie is a classic that ranks right up there with Old Yeller, The Biscuiteater (original version), or even the Lassie series. You get a little flavor for what life was like in a pre-WWII America.

Although I was only 9 years old at the time, this film somehow left a deep impression on me. Certainly not because it was the first I'd seen — I had been watching films for several years by then. No, it was the feeling generated in a kid's heart . . . anyone who loved dogs would have felt it, I'm sure. I don't even remember much else about it. Just the baying of that lonely, doomed animal, Bugle Ann, caught in a steel trap on a foggy night. I don't even recall the details around it. They found her the next morning (Lionel Barrymore in one of his more moving scenes) when it was too late. It was a rare film, in those days, that left me feeling worse when I left the movie house than when I went in.

(Of course, the impression might have been solidified for me when I discovered that the girl I eventually married had also been deeply saddened by this film — one of HER earliest film memories, and that was in the late 1940s when we talked about it.)

I do wish I could see a re-issue of it.