Judge Priest

Really admire John Ford and have done for some while, Westerns and non-Westerns. The story did sound like it had the makings of an interesting film if done correctly. There is some great talent in the cast, Will Rogers was always watchable and Hattie McDaniel had a knack for scene stealing in everything she was in. Felt rather iffy about hearing that Stepin Fetchit was in 'Judge Priest', who has never done much for me (race has absolutely nothing to do with why) and have always disliked it whenever he was imitated.

'Judge Priest' does nothing to change my mind. A shame, because actually to me it is not a bad film at all. Actually found 'Judge Priest' to be pretty decent and a pleasant diversion to distract one from all the bad times, with much to like while finding things that stuck out like a sore thumb. It is always interesting to see a Ford film from early on in his career, before he hit his stride, and one that didn't go into Western territory so evidence of his versatility as a director.

Plenty of good things here. 'Judge Priest' is a well made film, with handsome scenery and the photography (as always for a Ford film) is beautifully crafted and with the right amount of atmosphere. The music also fits nicely, not going for the sweeping, syrupy approach but instead a lighter touch that gels with the film's tone well. There are plenty of intriguing moments, while there is a nice mix of light-hearted humour and tenderness.

Absolutely loved that duet that has been mentioned by others. Ford's direction shows that he was showing a lot of talent and promise at this stage of his career, even if he was yet to hit his peak. Rogers is likeable and charismatic and McDaniel as expected lights up the screen during her screen time, being both amusing and sincere. Henry B. Walthall is another cast standout.

My negative general feelings of Fetchit did not change at all with 'Judge Priest' sadly. Here he is very annoying and with not much charisma, while his stereotypical behaviour is overdone, he is never funny or affectionate and the way his character is treated here is demeaning and condescending. Even when judging the film for its time, the racial stereotypes here did seem crude, have not dated well and it is easy to see why some would take offense.

Not all the humour and pathos come off brilliantly. Parts of the humour is corny, evident in the rather underwritten script, and makes one cringe and a couple of the more sentimental moments are cloying. The pace could have easily been tightened, as some of the film drags.

In conclusion, decent but not great. 6/10

This is warm movie with plenty of sympathetic characters. And plenty of nasty ones. A young love is threatened by a class-conscious mother, while the uncle is… well, he's Will Rogers. (The character's name is the title, Judge Billy Priest, but I suspect he's the "Will Rogers" character.) As with anything cast in the deep south in the 1890s, there are some moments and characters with which you might find yourself uncomfortable. I was taken aback by "Jeff Poindexter," portrayed by then-popular black actor Stepin Fetchit. (Fetchit has an awful, partisan political bio here at IMDb – the man deserves much better -- but he is an interesting story.) He seemed to me to be a set of overblown stereotypes, but the Judge befriends him and my wife was simply taken with him.

There's a lot to like about this film, although it does drag in places. (I was surprised when the lawn party ends.) I had to smile, though, when the judge got to play lawyer, called on witness, and the universe stood still to the strains of "Dixie."

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

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.

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.