Le clan des irréductibles

Definitely an old school movie where the drama is tied up in day to day living. No great examinations just a family trying to go about their own business and the impacts that their choices have on themselves and their community.

Fonda is great and Newman just looks like he has been logging his entire life, super convincing.

The conflicts within the family are frequent but they never allow them to go too far, family is family.

It won't knock your socks off but its a nice film :)

This is one of my favorite movies. It has excellent acting, a great story (by the late great Ken Kesey), and some very intense scenes. I found that Paul Newman's direction was very well done. This is a movie for fans of great character development.

First, Paul Newman, as usual, did an outstanding job. This is my favorite character. He was able to pull off this very icey dominance, even over his own father. He plays his character like he is Hank Stamper. Paul Newman always does a great job in his movies, but I think this one I especially like because he isn't as likeable as Cool Hand Luke or Fast Eddie (which are two other favorite characters and movies of mine).

Then there is Henry Fonda, who plays the eldest Stamper, Henry. He was a very interesting character, and Henry Fonda did a great job at playing him. He and Hank both head the family, and he and Paul Newman have a fractured relationship that is sort of crass, but still fun to see them on-screen together.

Then there is Michael Sarrazin, who plays the outcast Leeland Stamper. He is probably the best character. While all the other Stampers have leather skin and huge scars from wood chips, he has big bushy hair and is not a big barrel chested logger. Hank and Henry treat him like crap almost the whole movie, because he doesn't belong. Leeland just came back from the city, and he came back for the sole purpose of getting even with Hank.

And Finally, there is Lee Remick, who plays Hank's shut out wife Viv. She is probably the most complex character, simply because she only lets on what she thinks of her situation in little bits. She and Hank used to be wild lovers, but Hank is working so hard because of the logger's strike, he pretty much shuts her out, and so she begins to drift away from Hank.

My only problem with this movie is that they didn't have the big rights of passage fight between Hank and Leeland. In the book Leeland fought Hank after everything bad happened to the Stampers, as a way to show Hank that he isn't in control. I think that was the biggest part in the novel, and they left it out. But aside from that, I loved this movie.

Check this movie, or the book out for that matter, if you enjoy strong character development, many tragic events, and stories that take place in the backwoods of Oregon. 9/10

A lot of people seem to be down on this film for reasons I really can't understand. The film seem to stretch everyone's creative levels especially one performer I'll single out later.

Henry Fonda plays the head of the Stamper clan who own a lot of acreage in Oregon timber country and the family business is cutting logs. Enough to survive, but they do it on their own. But a strike by timber union loggers causes enmity between them and the Stampers who are seen as scabs.

There are some similarities between Fonda's character and the family patriarch he played in Spencer's Mountain. But whereas Spencer had a noble dignity to him, Ben Stamper is a dissolute old cuss who has enjoyed all the vices known and imparted a love for them unto his children. They would be half brothers Paul Newman and Michael Sarrazin who've also got issues between themselves that may prevent the Stampers from forming a united front.

Newman directed the film and he had a good eye for the scenery of the Oregon logging country. And he got some good performances from the rest of the cast. One of them Richard Jaeckel got his career role as a Stamper cousin. Newman reached his creative heights in Jaeckel's death scene which was played between him and Jaeckel. It's a long drawn out affair for reasons you'll know if you see the film. It will stay with you forever as it has me since I saw the film when it first came out. Richard Jaeckel got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor and the pity is that he was up against another popular character actor in Ben Johnson who won for The Last Picture Show.

Sometimes A Great Notion also got a second Oscar nomination for Best Song with We're All His Children by Henry Mancini and Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Bing Crosby recorded a fine version of it on one of his albums. It lost however to theme from Shaft.

Paul Newman deserved a lot more credit for this film than he got. I think if you see Sometimes A Great Notion you'll agree.

Unfortunately, as much as I love Paul Newman as an actor, the movie version of Ken Kesey's incredible book could have used a more seasoned director for its translation to the big screen. The perfect cast (the book even mentions Hank Stamper as looking like a muscular Paul Newman!), and some great performances (Fonda, Jaeckel, Remick), but the story just doesn't come across on film the way it should. I remember the first time I saw this movie was in the late 70's on TV (Portland's KPTV-12). It was so chopped-up for television that the story, character motivations, and ending made no sense at all to me. I loved Kesey's book "Cookoo's Nest" so read the novel of "Sometimes" to try to make some sense of what the story was all about. The book was an amazingly nuanced work of fiction with a great deal of depth and under-story (reading between the lines); none of which I saw on the TV screening. I later rented the video but even with the unedited version of the film, I found the story very lacking and barely comprehensive. I've recently watched the rental again (2005) and found more in the film than I had remembered, but I still feel that unless you've read the book, you can't truly understand what this movie and the character motivations are all about. They're just barely eluded to in the film version. In spite of all that, it's still a worthwhile movie to watch. If nothing else, it chronicles some great, authentic-looking logging footage. If you can, however, read the novel first and then catch the film. Also, if you ever make it to Newport, Oregon, visit the harbor bar "Bay Haven" where the scenes for the "Snag" were filmed. Tell them the old bartender from the "Embarcadero" sent you. ;-)

Kesey's superb epic novel with its shifting points of view and verb tense is far too complex a work to adapt directly. Kesey's prose while exceptionally cinematic in its description and action ironically proves unfilmable.

That said, Paul Newman and his production team have created a most admirable and solid, if rather top heavy adaption of Kesey's excellent novel.

The dialogue while rather shallow and weak in spurts (Kesey's rich vernacular is lost)is overcome by a wonderful ensemble cast featuring some of America's finest. Who better that Henry Fonda to play Newman's father? Richard Jaekel richly earns the Oscar nomination as the dim-witted but enthusiastic born again lumberjack Joe-Ben. The famous scene where Newman tries desperately to save Jaekel's character from drowning is heartbreakingly tragic and darkly comic. It is a marvelous example of direction.

Newman spent a great deal of time in my native Oregon researching the part and the film and his homework shows. Kesey's rich descriptions of the land remain largely intact. The sense of time and place is impressively captured in the photography of rusting metal, dripping ferns, rotting wood and mildewed carpets. This is a film that one can almost smell.

Newman is one of the finest artists ever to come out of Hollywood. Not only as an actor, but also as a director. He instinctivly knows how to illicit naturalistic, comfortable and utterly human performances from his casts and Sometimes a Great Notion is no exception. Well worth a look. 7 out of 10 stars.