Judge Priest

The movie is not only about the Confederacy, but seems to have been made during the Confederacy. It not only looks like an antique, but also plays like one. From the snail-like pacing to the exaggerated acting to the crude racial stereotypes, it points to a long gone era of film-making and, in the process, shows why that era is long gone. Frankly, I tuned in because I'd never seen humorist Will Rogers in a movie, but I had enjoyed his trenchant iconoclasm, so I guess I had expectations. Now I think he should have stuck to rope twirling and skewering politicians because his Judge Priest is so unrelentingly folksy as to rival the slow-talking Fetchit in knee-deep stereotype. Director Ford was always more comfortable directing caricature than catching nuance, though he could do the latter on occasion. So, it's no surprise that he fairly wallows in the opportunities proffered here. Then too, this romanticized view of the Old South, circa 1890, must have appealed to a director who specialized in romanticizing the past, especially in the so-called winning-of-the-West. In fact, Ford was so enamored with the whitewashed material here, he made it again twenty years later under the title The Sun Shines Bright. In my view, once was more than enough.

Will Rogers did three films with director John Ford who probably knew best how to utilize Will Rogers folksy charm and personality on the screen. Judge Priest is the best of the three films Rogers did with Ford. The film is based on a character created by Rogers fellow American humorist Irvin S. Cobb.

Cobb's Judge Priest stories are based on characters created from his childhood in Paducah, Kentucky. Priest is a man very much like Will Rogers in real life, full of homespun wisdom and common sense. The casting is almost perfect, I can't think of anyone else who could have done the role better.

The film is an amalgam of several of those stories the main plot line being the assault of Frank Melton by town misanthrope David Landau. The case would normally come before Will Rogers, but he's forced to recuse himself because it's the first case of Tom Brown who is the nephew of Rogers. Brown is back home now, a newly minted lawyer and he's involved with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Anita Louise. There's a connection between his personal and professional life that Brown little suspects.

Cobb's childhood Kentucky is an idyllic place where even the newly freed black people are contented in their second class status. The racist overtone of Judge Priest is unmistakable and why the film is criticized today. However Irvin S. Cobb was painting an accurate picture of the servile blacks, servile because they had to be. But the Stepin Fetchit character goes way over the top.

Judge Priest was later remade by Ford in the Fifties as The Sun Shines Bright and though the more obvious racial stereotyping got cleaned up somewhat, it could never be eliminated from the film.

But the film because of the presence of Will Rogers gets a high rating from me. It's a chance to see one America's wittiest and wisest men at his homespun best and that opportunity should not be passed up.

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

In the South, Kentucky circa 1890, we meet Judge Priest (played by Will Rogers), laid-back circuit court judge who dresses like Colonel Sanders and has bigger interests than court trials - namely lawn croquet, mint juleps, Confederate veteran social gatherings, taffy pulls, and his new-found friendship with an accused chicken thief (played by Stepin Fetchit) put on trial in his courtroom, who gives the judge tips on fishing for catfish. The judge also enjoys matchmaking for his nephew Rome (Tom Brown), a young man who has just graduated from law school and who is in love with the pretty girl next door in spite of his stuffy mama's protests (seems the girl isn't good enough for the mighty "Kentucky Priest's", mama has her eye on someone else for her son). Soon the film switches gear when our young lawyer gets his first case and defends a local man put on trial.

This film was actually quite a bit better than I was expecting - Will Rogers, whose role dominates this film (aside from Henry B. Walthall, who has a smaller, but important piece here) was more interesting in this than I have seen him in other roles, probably because he comes across as more like himself than a character. Henry B. Walthall, the handsome "Little Colonel" in "The Birth of a Nation", still looks attractive here nearly 20 years later, a real silver fox to my eyes. Hattie McDaniel plays a stereotypical black mammy, singing and hanging laundry and preparing the judge yet another mint julep in most of her scenes, yet comes across with loads of charm. Really quite an interesting film.

John Ford adopts and works within the conventions of this homespun genre. As he did with the genre of every film he made. Yes, racial stereotyping -- but Ford knew it was, and let you see it for what it was. Yes, sentimental and corny, but knowing and loving that way, presenting it for what you the viewer want to make of it.

After seventy years, still so funny, so affectionate, so insightful. And topical for 2003: is there any better depiction of populist politics, or expression of faith in the democratic mystery of the common man?

The art that conceals art. Try to see it on a film-projected screen. I'm off to look at THE SUN SHINES BR