Nice effects though.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

In 1950, when this film was released, tobacco smoking, mainly involving cigarettes, was considered a necessity by the majority of American men, and minority of women. The advantages were considered to trump various disadvantages, including increasing evidence of significant health risks, such as lung cancer. Thus, the men responsible for inventing a machine that rolled and packaged cigarettes were considered heroes for much reducing the cost of cigarettes. That's what this film is about. Ironically, Patricia Neal, one of the stars would die of lung cancer, and Gary Cooper, another star, would die at the relatively young age of 60 from a cancer that eventually went to his lungs. Many of the movie stars of this era died prematurely of lung cancer, or other maladies, in which smoking was later proven to be a significant risk factor......Revenge is the primary motivation for much of the action. We have Brant Royle's(Gary Cooper) strong motivation to eventually bring local tobacco magnet Major Singleton to his knees for running Brant's family out of the area some years go. Now , Brant returns, ostensibly to settle his uncle's estate, but also with the mind to ruin Singleton, and marry his daughter. He hopes to accomplish this by commercializing a machine that rolls tobacco into cigarettes and packages them, thus making cigarettes much cheaper than the cigars that Singleton champions. After Brant's success, Singleton wants to extract revenge by challenging Brant in a formal duel. Brant declines, citing laws that prohibit such duels, and stating that they are a waste of human life. Singleton calls him a yellow-bellied coward, but Brant won't change his mind. Singleton threatens that he will shoot Brant , in any case. And, he does, but a compromise shot that only wounds Brant. He then retires to his buggy and shoots himself. In effect, Brant won the duel, completing his revenge against Singleton.,,......John Barton(Jeff Corey),who invented the cigarette machine, extracted revenge for Brant's eventual belittling of his role in the company, going to Detroit to take part in the automobile revolution......Most shockingly, Singleton's daughter, Margaret, accepted Brant's marriage proposal mainly to extract revenge for bankrupting her family and being the cause of her father's suicide. She did this by engineering anti-monopoly lawsuits, and by selling the many shares of the company that Brant had entrusted her with. ...... There's the romantic triangle between Margaret, Brant, and Sonia(Lauren Bacall). Sonia was a more lovable person than the aristocratic Margaret. She loaned Brant the money to start his business. However, she suffered the indignity of being the madame of a bordello, disguised as a rooming house. Brant made the wrong choice of social position over love. After Margaret left him, he tried to return to Sonia, but she said that all the things she used to love about him had vanished.......I question why Barton resorted to someone like Brant , with no capital of his own, to commercialize his machine? Surely, there were plenty of wealthy men who could see the financial gain. Also, Brant's choice of con-man Chris Malley(Jack Carson) as a business partner is curious. Chris was a mere patent medicine peddler when Brant met him. He became rather skilled in running parts off the company.......I much enjoyed this obscure gem, shown on the TCM channel........Note that Cooper and Neal had also stared in a film the previous year, and had an ongoing affair......Director Michael Curtiz also had directed the previous acclaimed "Mildred Pierce", the screenplay of which has many similarities to this film.

Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal starred in 1949's "The Fountainhead", an adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel about an architect who refused to sacrifice his integrity or principles. A year later, the same two starred in this film, "Bright Leaf", a period piece in which Cooper plays a damaged man who becomes successful in the tobacco industry. In "The Fountainhead", Cooper is a strong man of principle, but he is probably the weakest part of that film, perhaps because he did not understand the film (as he himself admitted), perhaps because the role did not suit him. I think Cooper better understood his role in "Bright Leaf". His character, Brant Royle, feels more authentic. But Royle is not a man of principle. He is a caricature--the uncaring, destructive capitalist. He is a man with a chip on his shoulder and as far from a man of principle as one can get."Bright Leaf" actually has more in common with the movie "Giant", in which Rock Hudson and James Dean play warring oilmen. But "Giant' is a much better film. Cooper, like Hudson, is headstrong. And Dean's character is like Brant Royle--a man with a chip on his shoulder, who only wants payback for perceived slights. But "Giant" is a bright and shining production, where "Bright Leaf" is a dingy film of sordid intents.There is a bright moment in "Bright Leaf"--near the end of the film, when Royle discovers the true intentions of his wife, Margaret. In that scene, Patricia Neal virtually glows as she burns with the intensity of her revealed emotions.But otherwise, this film is only as compelling as a grudge match between two self-absorbed and boring factions. It's not the director's fault; the writing defines these characters and drives them. It's not a horrible film, but it falls short of "The Fountainhead", which--even with the miscasting of Cooper--contains a striking story of principles.

Surprised I am that some reviewers here really liked this overwrought melodrama about the tobacco industry and one man's rise to power because he has the vision to see how cigarettes could come from machines.Gary Cooper has the most unsympathetic role of his career as a stormy man caught between conflicted love with two women--Patricia Neal, headstrong and rich, and Lauren Bacall, the madam of a brothel. There's a suggestion of GWTW in these characters, but too much of the dialog resorts to confrontational moments that are never resolved.Most of the hatred comes from Patricia Neal's dad, Donald Crisp, who from the very start of the film wishes Gary Cooper would drop dead. It takes up too much of the film with the love/hate relationships between Cooper, Neal and Bacall getting the most footage.But in the end, with these unsympathetic characters chewing up the scenery with all their vitriol, the overall feeling is a waste of time. None of the relationships evolve smoothly, not even at the conclusion.Summing up: No wonder the film is so little known today. The saving grace is an interesting score by Victor Young.

Produced in 1950 by Henry Blanke for Warner Brothers BRIGHT LEAF is set in the tobacco growing region of the American South at the turn of the 20th. Century. A highly charged drama - BRIGHT LEAF is about ambition, love and loss and retribution and was expertly directed by the prolific Michael Curtiz. Based on the novel by Foster Fitz-Simons it was splendidly written for the screen by Ranald MacDougall ("Mildred Peirce") from which emerged a sparkling, and at times, spontaneous script. Its balmy Southern setting looked great thanks to the smart Art Direction by Stanley Fleischer, the crisp Monochrome Cinematography of Karl Freund and the atmospheric music by the always wonderful Victor Young.Gary Cooper is Brant Royle who returns to his home in the South after some years. He rides into Kingsmont where years before his family was dispossessed, humiliated and forced out at the hands of wealthy tobacco tycoon Major Singleton (Donald Crisp). Now he's back and intends to exact some sort of vengeance on the irascible and acerbic Major. Low on funds ("I own a good horse - I own a good suit of clothes and I have $40 in my pocket") he meets up with an old flame - the attractive Sonia Kovac (Lauren Bacall) who runs a "boarding house for young ladies" and persuades her to back him in a business venture in establishing a new idea of a cigarette making machine. The enterprise is a runaway success and almost overnight Royle - along with his partners Sonia and Chris Malley (Jack Carson) - becomes a millionaire to the chagrin of the Major. Royle had always loved the Major's unobtainable and distant daughter Margaret (Patricia Neal) and makes plans now to marry her. This - together with Royle's on going presence in Kingsmont, his phenomenal business success and a pistol duel between them that goes wrong - drives the Major to take his own life. Later Margaret does agree to marry him but only with the sole purpose to destroy Brant Royle and obtain retribution for the death of her father. The picture ends with Royle financially ruined and a well executed climactic sequence which sees the opulent Singleton mansion going up in flames. With Sonia also turning him down Brant Royle rides out of Kingsmont on the same road he entered in the hope of finding contentment elsewhere.One of the great aspects of BRIGHT LEAF is the stunning score by the great (and cigar chomping) Victor Young! Normally a Warner picture like this would have a score by the studio's resident composer Max Steiner. But Steiner was over committed on other projects and suggested his friend Victor Young write the music. Young accepted the assignment and turned in one of his finest scores. The Main Title is a sprawling and sweeping theme for full orchestra! A ravishing piece with the strings, upward yearning, climbing to their topmost register. There is also a gorgeous plaintive melody for the Lauren Bacall character, a brilliantly exciting cue for a montage of the cigarette machine as it spews out thousands of cigarettes and a frantic cue near the end for the magnificent house fire. The music from BRIGHT LEAF is high on the list of admirers of Young's scores! BRIGHT LEAF is an engrossing and engaging story and has smooth performances throughout. Cooper is particularly good as is Bacall but Neal's southern nasally drawl is a bit grating at times. And in a rare unsympathetic role Donal Crisp is excellent as the Major. Curiously cigarette smoking is somewhat glorified in the picture and viewing the film today - some sixty years after it was made and when the smoking habit is increasingly taboo - it now seems a little perverse!Classic line from BRIGHT LEAF...........Jack Carson to Lauren Bacall when she bail's him out of jail......."Maam! I consider you a rare gem in the diadem of womanhood".