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Tobacco Road (Ford, 1941) #TSPDT 841

A poor farmer has to raise 50 dollar before the weekend to keep his little farm on Tobacco Road.

Although highly stagey, both in idea and execution, this was a fabulously funny film to watch (although I went through some problems until I could understand the characters). Also, the ending is quite amazing with the beautiful realization that it's not so easy to really change. I was quite touched by it and it also was a big surprise for what I expected to become a really run-of-the-mill happy end.

I remember many beautiful details of the film: the dog, running to the mans lap to be stroked, the naughtily innocent Gene Tierney (in her first role?), the insolent husband of the other daughter and the obnoxious little boy. His incessant rambling is simply hilarious, and the blazing stupidity of his character are of such, as I cannot remember from any other film I have seen.

This might be very worth re-watching, maybe with focus on the dialogue.  There is a lot of it, a bit hard to understand for me, but from what I gather, extremely funny and witty.



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