THE GREEN PROMISE (56)

Directed by: William D. Russell (1949)

Starring: Walter Brennan, Natalie Wood, Marguerite Chapman, Robert Paige

The Pitch: A stubborn farmer and his four children clash over how best to work their new farm.

Theo Sez: A surprise : a little-known, fairly standard Old Hollywood family film (featuring the 11-year-old Wood at her most winsome) in which the family is ragingly dysfunctional, riven by in-fighting and tyrannised by ornery paterfamilias Brennan. Given that his oppressiveness includes disallowing any private property for any member of his family (everything has to be "shared"), and cloaking his authoritarianism in a veil of "democracy" every bit as transparent as the rubber-stamping of Politburo decisions by the people's soviets, it's not too hard (even if you don't know the year of release) to infer a bit of Commie-bashing in his villainy ; certainly his opponent, the young man who finally rescues this blighted family, fairly reeks of healthy capitalism, the "green promise" of post-war America - he even runs a program for young entrepreneurs ("set up for kids just like you!" he gushes to our heroine), where youngsters can make enough money to put themselves through college. That he's also arrogant and a bit of a Fascist ("Can you take orders?") doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone, but then this is the kind of didactic movie that stops the action for five minutes so the town preacher (and of course the film-makers) can deliver an entire sermon. By no means a lost masterpiece but fascinating in all kinds of ways : as a gauge of the post-war mood, as a Cold War artefact, and for the surprising message (like something out of 1984) that the young must guard against the political immaturity of the older generation - even if it means turning on their own parents.