People are voting emotionally.

Dreadfully Boring

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Copyright jointly by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. and Walter Wanger Pictures, Inc., 24 June 1948. New York opening at Loew's Criterion: 25 August 1948. U.S. release: August 1948. U.K. release: 31 January 1949. Australian release: 2 December 1948. U.S. and Australian release through Universal-International. U.K. release through J. Arthur Rank-General Film Distributors. U.K. and U.S. length: 109 minutes. 9,789 feet. Australian length: 9,431 feet. 105 minutes.SYNOPSIS: The Civil War. Seceding from Mississippi, the Dabneys of Lebanon Valley try to hold out against Southern troops.NOTES: Location exteriors filmed in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.COMMENT: A cut-price Gone With The Wind, ambitious yet overlong, with all the action saved for the last reel. Rather splendidly and expensively staged the action is too. Those viewers with stamina and patience enough to endure the slow-moving, long-winded plot, the cardboard characters and the posturing ("acting" is too generous a word) of such players as Susan Hay ward, Van Heflin, Ward Bond and Whitfield Connor, will doubtless enjoy the sudden excitement. A few may resent being roused from their slumbers.But most cinemagoers will not bother to see the film at all. A wise decision - they will avoid boredom and ennui - but they will miss out on some grand scenery, colorfully photographed by Winton Hoch. The interiors lit by Lionel Lindon are attractive too - glossily picturesque to contrast with the more rugged work of Mr Hoch. Technicolor also enhances the costumes and sets leaving little to the imagination, though Miss Hayward is not always seen at her best.Perhaps the blame for the mechanical performances of the principals must be largely apportioned to George Marshall who directs throughout in a rather static, lifeless style. He is not the right man for period soap opera. Comedy is his forte. Some of the support players are more fluent, particularly Julie London who steals every scene in which she is allowed to appear. Karloff has an odd role as a friend-of-the-family Choctaw Indian. He is miscast - but we enjoy seeing him anyway.

The story is about the Dabney family and it begins in Mississippi just before the Civil War. The Dabneys are a proud family and not in favor of secession. But they and the folks around them are a distinct minority and eventually they end up seceding from Mississippi once the state joins the Confederacy. Not surprisingly, the new Confederacy is NOT pleased that this county has joined the Union...and bad things are a comin'.But there's much more to the tale and it centers around Morna Dabney (Susan Hayward). She is vivacious and beloved by Clay--a man who loves the idea of war and secession. But when Morna is injured and it appears as if she'll never walk again, Clay shows his true colors...and the roguish Keith (Van Helfin) steps up and shows he really is a heck of a guy.This is enjoyable and with very nice acting. The only real problem is that what happens to the Dabneys and the county is pretty much foreordained and there are few surprises here. The story, by the way, was inspired by a similar situation in Jones county, where such a rebellion against the state of Mississippi occurred.

The other comment is quite good in that I can find little with which to disagree. True, there is a weak script, but then, there were a lot of them floating around Hollywood in the late 40s. Van Heflin was one of those actors who was hard to pigeonhole. He could play villains or heros. His role in Patterns was a classic. Here, as the illegitimate son of a "powerful" individual-- we're never told who, he tries to conjure up some of the dash of Gable from years before but winds up looking like a cross between Rhet and Billy Goat Gruff. Susan Hayward's performance is weak, compared to some of her later roles, as is blustering Ward Bond. Whitfield Conner is charming, as he was in the few roles he left us but largely immemorable. And, then there was Karloff: here, out of heavy make-up as a Native American (we called them Indians back then)but still wide-eyeing it and looking mysterious. (I remember as a kid when he gets shot, the audience sighing their disapproval; but the writers snuffed him anyway). All in all, the film is not GWTW, and, in my view nor should it be. It was a bit of late 40s costume fantasy and certainly worth the $.32 I paid to see it in '48. I loved it then and loved when I saw it on the late show, years later. It's entertaining and should not be taken beyond its face value. It does not pretend to be a classic and will not be taken as such. But, I found it entertaining both as a kid and as an adult (or big kid, as my wife insists).

Universal seem to have thrown a lot of cash at these sub 'Gone with the Wind' shenanigans but really should have paid more attention to the script. Although a potentially interesting idea - a small valley tries to stay neutral during the US Civil War - the movie concentrates almost exclusively on a vapid central romance lifted almost wholesale from that earlier Selznick classic.Van Hefflin tries hard to inject the kind of dangerous humour that Clark Gable brought to Rhett Butler but Susan Hayward is hopelessly miscast as the young, flighty Southern belle. An excellent actress in the right circumstances, here she looks far too sensible for the role and resorts to a permanent wide-eyed stare to convey youth and innocence. She merely looks like a startled rabbit.Elsewhere, what should have been the pivotal role of the valley's patriarch is simply not given enough screentime, thus reducing Ward Bond to the occasional ineffectual splutter and the climax to an empty, mechanical spectacle devoid of emotional resonance. Boris Karloff brings a touch of class to the role of the friendly native American retainer but Julie London is wasted in a thankless role.Overall, it's the kind of picture that the studio must have presumed would make itself and this lack of commitment results in a significant lack of quality.