Boring

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is a pretty good film with some memorable actors. "Tobacco Road" was a best selling book and later a successful play. Though comedic, the story is rather sad. We have a group of people barely having enough to eat. Because they are not very well educated or have little ambition, their choices are really limited. Jeeter, the main character, is a thief and an opportunist. As is often the case, his peccadilloes only come back to bite him. When he steals, he is too stupid to get away. I watched this movie with my father back ion the fifties and for many years it gave me my impression of what came to be called hillbillies. Of course, these stereotypes were enhanced by the very successful TV comedy, "The Beverly Hillbillies." The movie made me crawl because these people were so shortsighted and so careless and so close to the edge. I never got the humor.

In the 1940 John Ford masterpiece "The Grapes of Wrath," Charley Grapewin played a Depression-era Okie patriarch who dies after being forcibly evicted from the land on which his Joad family had lived for generations. The following year, in Ford's "Tobacco Road," Grapewin enjoyed a much larger role, playing a somewhat similar character. Here, he played Jeeter Lester, the lazy, shiftless head of a "poor white trash" family in Depression-era rural Georgia that is about to be evicted from its ancestral abode. Based on Jack Kirkland's 1933 stage play (the longest-running Broadway show at the time, as the film's opening credits tell us), which was itself based on an Erskine Caldwell novel, "Tobacco Road" gives us a typical week in the life of the Lesters. We meet Jeeter and his put-upon wife Ada (Elizabeth Patterson), borderline retarded son Dude (William Tracy) and imbecilic daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney, in her third film). Desperate for food, the poverty-stricken Jeeter steals a bag of turnips from his son-in-law Lov (Ward Bond), who is having major troubles with his 13-year-old wife but spurns the fawning attentions of 23-year-old Ellie May because she's just too durn old! Dude eventually marries a woman a good 20 years older than himself, a nearby evangelist named Sister Bessie (Marjorie Rambeau), only because she has promised to buy him a car with a horn to toot (Dude, for some reason, has a horn fixation!). This $800 automobile, however, gives our man Jeeter some big ideas on how he might raise the $100 he needs to save his land....I must confess that on my initial viewing of this film, I was somewhat appalled at the cracker-barrel inanity of some of the proceedings. Played mainly for laughs, the picture struck me much more favorably on a repeat viewing. Grapewin is a marvel in his role of Jeeter, giving practically an Oscar-worthy performance, Ford's direction is typically sensitive and impeccable, and DOP Arthur C. Miller's lensing is just beautiful, never more so than in the scene where the Lesters walk to the poor farm amidst falling leaves. (Miller would deservedly win an Oscar for his work on that same year's "How Green Was My Valley.") Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson's script is very amusing, as well; he would go on, 13 years later, to write the script for the Gene Tierney film "Black Widow." And speaking of Gene (my main reason for renting this film in the first place), in her 1979 autobiography "Self-Portrait," she tells us that she "was sprayed each morning with a thin coat of oil--over my arms, legs, and face--after which dirt was rubbed on" to achieve her begrimed character's look in this film. She also mentions that she was so embarrassed by the idiot-seduction scenes with Bond that she had to ask Ford to clear the set when these were shot. Gene is wonderful as always here, but, sadly, only gets to utter six lines of dialogue, all told. "Tobacco Road" was her first film with Dana Andrews (playing a kindly, normal neighbor of the Lesters, who almost seems to be of a different species!), although they share no scenes together; the two would go on to appear in "Belle Starr," "Laura" (the classiest of film noirs), "The Iron Curtain" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends." The Lester family is referred to as "just naturally trifling" by a police chief during the course of this film, but the picture itself is hardly a trifling affair. Though certainly not the classic that is "The Grapes of Wrath," it is nevertheless an artful picture, featuring some wonderful performances and amusing moments, ultimately leaving us with a sense of sadness regarding these poor folk who are now "gone with the wind (hmm, where have I heard THAT line before?) and the dust...."

This film is so Great because it is full of contrasts. One minute it is the most funny unbelievable thing you've ever seen and the next your in tears. The sadness and the hilarity are spliced together with moments of shock and horror. Tobacco Road exposes the sweet, sensitive and loving qualities of humanity, and at the same time remind us that we are riddled with meanness, selfishness, and stupidity. I have watched this film many times and never tire of viewing it, it always moves me. It has been one of my very favorites since I first saw it on American Movie Classics.I just can't believe that it hasn't been remastered and released on DVD!!! I believe it was released on VHS years ago, it is super hard to find and goes for big $'s (and who uses VHS anymore anyway?) C'mon Criterion get with it, this movie deserves it. I got so desperate to see this Masterpiece that I bought a VHS copy on eBay but it is so terrible, blurry, fuzzy, and the sound inaudible, I would not dare share it with anyone because none of the Genius would be conveyed. This guy on eBay was selling lots to folks like myself wishing to have our own so we could watch it again and again, and share this Great Film with friends. It's the only film in my top 10, that hasn't been, or isn't scheduled for remastering. Come on re-master executives, what's the problem?

I have seen this film on television 5 or 6 times in the last 30 years,and would sit and watch it anytime! Why is it not re-released,I know 3(like minded)people who would love to have this movie, And when you delve into the origins!wow!its HOT! even for now! OK so the play is different, but that doesn't take from a hilarious plot! I have searched for a copy a couple of times over the last 2 years,to no avail, only on VHS and available in the USA only! Who owns the rights to the film? and can you please release it? Like a lot of early films this has somehow missed the 'Classic label' but I think it is a real Classic and very funny!well worth watching,out of ten I would give it a 10/10 as even the silver screen helps as a mood enhancer,this was made during the depression! so I'm not sure where the 1941 comes from?