A traveling salesman offers Jess Birdwell, played by Gary Cooper, temptation in the form of a musical instrument. Richard Eyer plays their son Little Jess, a small boy with Great Big Talent, who is one of most natural child actors of the day. Miss Love was actually about 30 years old when she appeared in this film, only some nine years younger than Dorothy McGuire who played her mother, yet she plays young very well.
She is gawky and awkward, daring to dance with her young man at the county fair, daring to kiss him in the attic over the keyboard of the banished sin-tempting organ, yet hesitant to appear before him in bare feet.
Later on in the film, it is finished and hangs a bit crookedly on the wall. A sublime moment, and perhaps Wyler cannot communicate easily with his actors because some things are just beyond words. The three Birdwell children play well against each other, poke each other and tease each other with a naturalness that does not look rehearsed.
Anthony Perkins is troubled not only by war, but bedeviled by the man-crazy Hudspeth girls and their mother, wonderfully played by Marjorie Main. The war causes him just as much crisis of conscience as his son, but Cooper is not a boy who can easily rebel.
He sees consequences his son does not. His son shoots wildly, without aiming, at strangers. Dorothy McGuire plays Eliza, in one of her best roles and demonstrates once again her versatility and impeccable instinct for drawing out a character.
Perhaps because author Jessamyn West did not write the character Eliza as anything but real, and warm, and independent, and intelligent, and somewhat hardheaded. I still think Samantha should have won an Oscar. And the Nobel Prize and perhaps the Croix de Guerre.
Eliza, beyond being the heart and conscience of her family, the maker of pies, and the tucker-in of shirttails, is also a minister in their Quaker community. Possibly more could have been explored in the movie as well on this, that the Quakers were among the first to establish equality between men and women.
She is also a woman who displays a passion for her husband that is most ardent and very human, and unlike what other virginal movie Quaker ladies seem to have had written into their roles. The romance and intimated sexual pleasure between the long-married characters of Cooper and McGuire is another testament to the fine acting instinct and knowledge of character they both learned over their careers. However, being a Quaker minister puts Eliza square up against the debate about The War.
She debates with her son and husband, prays and argues. Morgan cross into Indiana and overrun their farm, she displays both her Quaker resistance to fight, and her human frailty in forgetting her beliefs. This pacifist Quaker minister nearly clubs a man to death because he is about to kill and eat her beloved pet goose, Samantha. She would have still committed violence against the soldier. The real difference would have been after the daughter had been saved from either being killed or raped by the soldier.
Or would we see the intense satisfaction of having won the fight, that blood-thirst feeling of justification and victory? That would have been an interesting scene. The raid by the Confederates into Southern Indiana was an actual event. However, the movie is set in , and the raid occurred the following year.
That year of the South famously took the war into Northern territory, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and here in Indiana. Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan was a daring Confederate cavalry leader who brought around two thousand soldiers across the Ohio River, pretty much on his own initiative as his orders brought him into northern Kentucky only.
They spent several days raiding supplies and horses from civilians like the Birdwells, a very common military activity during that war done by both Union and Confederate armies. More Details. Jessamyn West 38 books 34 followers. Search review text. Connie G. The individual stories were first published in magazines, then gathered together as a book in Jess and Eliza Birdwell--a nurseryman and a Quaker preacher--live on a family farm with their brood of children.
Jessamyn West based the main characters on her grandparents and great-grandparents. Some of the stories are humorous, and others are sentimental and full of wisdom. The writing is lovely with an old-fashioned charm. This is one of my very favorite books, so there will only be reasons why here. The Birdwells are Quakers ish , and Eliza the mother is a Quaker preacher. Jess Dad has grown up in the religion, but lives in it as a born-in does I'm a born-in in my quirky faith, too.
The book is truly an assembly of short stories West published through the years, and in she pulled them into novel form, and I love each story. I love it that they don't go in chronological order, but they go in order of character explication. There is humor, pathos, family love, and the best love scene EVER!
You read it and you'll see. Horse racing on the way to church, deep considerations of their pacifist religion as the Civil War rubs up against their very home, doctrines of non-slavery while they have two black servants?
An organ happens, when music is not a positive thing for Quakers, apparently. But one of my favorite chapters is The Vase. And the last chapter. I love this book. I read this book as a year old because my mother loved it, and loved the movie, which we saw a number of times. But reading the book this many decades later, my receptors for her words sit deeper and the room for her profundity now has place within me it never had in my years old self.
Interestingly, have never read any other of Jessamyn West's other works, so have now begun to collect those I cannot find in the usual places. I'm interested in the thoughts of others out there that might have read some of her books and to which you'd recommend I read first in my further quest of her works.
Jess's favorite expletive. A lot of silly stories about a minority cultural group. Not my kind of humour although it may have been considered acceptable — perhaps even funny — when it was published in Emma Jane. I don't believe I've ever read a book quite like this before. It was funny, it was fresh, it was sweet, but it was very strange. On one hand, it puzzled me. On the other, it struck a chord deep inside me and I absolutely loved it.
I still don't know what to think. The Friendly Persuasion is the story of the Birdwell family; Jess, his wife Eliza, and their six children. It was much different than I expected; I thought it would be a lot about the Civil War, but it turned out that was only a tiny part of the story which was over almost as soon as it began. What a dangerous and hypocritical message to send out. A surprisingly challenging film about what happens when devoutness to a religion collides with the realities of the world.
Dorothy Maguire is the Quaker mother who wants to do the thinking for her young adult children, misguidedly wanting to prevent temptations from entering their lives rather than equipping them to deal with them when they do. Gary Cooper is the more reasonable father who doesn't see why pleasure and religious faith have to be mutually exclusive.
Then a little thing called the Civil War directly affects them, and they have to decide when to stick to their beliefs and when to modify them for something bigger than themselves. Overall the movie is still a little light for my tastes and doesn't flesh out these questions as complexly as I might have preferred.
But still, I was expecting a cornball, wholesome family film and so was pleasantly surprised by what I got instead. Grade: A-. Greetings again from the darkness. Released in , this William Wyler film holds up today because some of the debate and dilemmas touched on remain unresolved 57 years and numerous wars later.
The film takes place in 's Indiana as the Civil War rages. The story is told from the perspective of a pacifist Quaker family and is based on the book by Jessamyn West. The patriarch of this Quaker family is played by Gary Cooper, who was four years past his Oscar winning performance in High Noon, and five years from his death due to cancer.
The film's best performance comes from young Anthony Perkins his second film who of course made cinematic history as Norman Bates in the classic Psycho. Both of these Perkins characters share mommy issues and complicated decisions of conscience. The opposition to war and violence is the main theme here, and there have been many interpretations over the years.
Is it religious belief or fear that prevents the men from joining the cause? At least Perkins' character is honest enough to wonder. Cooper kind of plays against type here since he was so often a man of movie action, but in reality his strength of character and belief allows him to maintain his image. Comedy relief is at hand given the youngest son's ongoing battle with Samantha the Goose, a family pet with devious attack modes.
See, every character has their own personal battles and decisions regarding conscience and violence. The great Margaret Main has a sequence as a single mother of three daughters every one a gem! The daughters introduce Cooper and Perkins to the joys of music One of the daughters is played by Marjorie Durant, whose father was a writer and assistant to Charlie Chaplin.
Her grandmother married EF Hutton, so Ms. Durant could have spent a great deal of time researching her only family stories. While it's difficult to understand these days, screenwriter Michael Wilson was not originally credited for his work. He was on the Hollywood Blacklist, and his screen credit was not reinstated until Though this movie was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, it didn't win any and lost out to Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days.
A final note of interest, this was Ronald Reagan's favorite movie and he presented a copy to Mikhail Gorbachev in hopes the message would prove the downside to war. HotToastyRag 4 July In Friendly Persuasion, a timeless theme of teenage rebellion gets taken to a new setting. There are more "thees" and "thous" in this movie than you can shake a stick at. When Gary gets into a horse and buggy race on the way to church with his neighbor, Dorothy scolds him. Can't get into too much trouble around these folks!
Who's the teenager who breaks his parents hearts? Young Anthony Perkins in his breakthrough Oscar-nominated role.
He's an absolute doll in this movie and gives such a heart-wrenching performance, it's almost impossible to believe he could ever play a villain. Poor Tony only had four more years to play good guys before making the mistake of Psycho. I've never seen Psycho, so I enjoy watching his talent and his handsome mug in his earlier movies.
It's ironic that I normally find both Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire irritating, but since they're supposed to be placid and peace loving, their monotone voices completely work.
Gary's hesitancy and Dorothy's soothing lilt make so much sense, since they're Quakers. Rent this s classic, even if you don't like Gary Cooper. You can always fast-forward his scenes and only watch the cutie-pie's scenes. You'll get treated to the beautiful song and theme music "Thee I Love" by Dimitri Tiomkin, and you'll also see a new way in which war can destroy a family.
ElMaruecan82 8 February Families or households could be either happy or dysfunctional, in William Wyler, they always found the right painter to their complex relationships especially with war or conflicts as emotional canvases. Either like peas in a pod or not amounting to a hill of beans, Wyler always knew how to draw individuals as family members, generally getting the best out of actors. But even by Wyler's standards, there's something too conventional in that bucolic portrayal of a Quaker homesteader's family: the Birdwells, starring Gary Cooper as the reassuring patriarch, Dorothy McGuire the straight-laced holier-than-thou mother who bans as much fun as possible it's a wonder she got such goofy kids: Little Jess with his love-and-hate relationship with a pet-goose, Phyllis Love as Mattie enamored with one of the neighbors' son and Anthony Perkins as the awkward-mannered son.
What we've got in the beginning is literally "Little Quaker House in the Prairie". The first act establishes the major conflict between the Quakers' pacifist philosophy and the ongoing Civil war threatening their peaceful life and calling for every man, old or young, to defend their properties, their lives. Watching Gary Cooper playing a Quaker naturally takes us back to "High Noon" where his bride played by Grace Kelly refused to see him confront Frank Miller, the score from Dimitri Tiomkin and the Oscar-nominated song makes the parallel even more inevitable.
But there's a reason why "High Noon" is a classic and why "Friendly Persuasions is only an acceptable finished product made in Hollywood. The major conflict set-up during a powerful church sequence is cancelled out by the sense of unshakable sitcom-like unity within the Birdwells' family and diluted in many debatable episodic moments involving the buying of an organ or a horse.
I understand it's supposed to show that the Birdwells aren't equally zealous, that Jess has a knack for sport and music but by the time the action really picks up, we're only a twenty minutes away from the ending and the climax didn't leave up to the expectations the tag-line inspired. I read Wyler didn't know whether Cooper should have used a gun or not and that hesitation shows up.
Even Cooper was displeased with his character believing it didn't fit his reputation. It's like the real dilemma wasn't much between God's precepts and the war but how to handle actors' images for the sake of the film' publicity. So it's no wonder the film failed to deliver a definite answer to its issue if the director was more cautious about the public's response. Wyler is one of the best of his generation but I have a feeling the film might have been different if it was directed by Elia Kazan.
It's a real shame because you can see how Anthony Perkins the only Oscar-nominated cast-member, which is saying a lot for a Wyler picture is too tortured deep inside, to be drowned in the middle of anecdotal sequences.
Perkins made such a sensation that he was branded the new 'James Dean' and I could see why, his shy and awkward manners, his lanky demeanor and his expressive eyes made the film. But there's so few of him the film leaves you hungry for something that never happens. It's all starters but no main course. Maybe I expected a little more from a film that won the Golden Palm, something more provocative, more thought-provoking, Wyler just plays it on the safe side and leaves it warm. Even Phyllis Love as the girl in love made me expect some twist in her romantic subplot but the camera was unnecessarily enamored with Cooper and McGuire who bored the hell out of me as the eternal killjoy.
So granted the film has its outdated charm, its postcard look of Indiana Valley, the cute rivalries between neighbors, the moments where you could see Quakers becoming outcasts from the rest of the fighting men, I wish Perkins could become a sort of outcast too, a black sheep or someone who'd confront Cooper like Dean confronted his fathers in "Rebel Without a Cause" or "East of Eden".
It could have been more daring but it was too clean, too civilized, too anticlimactic. It's exactly as if the Bridge on the River Kwai didn't explode, that's how I felt. I don't think I have ever been disappointed by a William Wyler movie, even his most conventional works carried interesting depths beneath their well-directed, well-photographed and Hollywood-correct look.
But "Friendly Persuasion" suffers from an uneven pacing and no specific direction, made by a William Wyler whose pair of Best Picture winners put him in a zone of commercial comfort, this film doesn't standout as one of his best, it's not even one of his memorable lesser movies. I'm glad Wyler could pull himself together and make his final masterpiece: "Ben-Hur" three years later, and Perkins would get a role that would fit his acting talent in "Psycho".
So the best achievement of "Friendly Persuasion" is that at least it persuaded Hollywood that Perkins was a talent on which to invest. MOscarbradley 4 August This piece of authentic homespun Americana is still one of a handful of truly great films made by its director William Wyler. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, something almost unheard of for an American film at the time. Gary Cooper, never better , is the peace-loving farmer, Dorothy McGuire, equally good , is his wife and Anthony Perkins, brilliant in only his second film and picking up an Oscar nomination , is the son who goes off to fight.
Wyler, who himself served in the Second World War, was too canny a director to make an outright anti-war film though the message of the picture is clear. He was also too good a director to fudge it. It may move at a quiet, almost stately pace while remaining one of his most overtly cinematic pictures. A huge hit in its day, it seems now to have all but disappeared. What Is It Good For? A long time getting to the point hurts "Friendly Persuasion".
The film is about a family of Quakers in Indiana who oppose war and violence just as the Civil War is hitting its hottest point.
The eldest child Oscar nominee Anthony Perkins of parents Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire gets torn between his faith, his duty, his home, his wants and his freedoms. While this occurs a local soldier Robert Middleton courts Perkins' younger sister Phyllis Love and also makes Perkins think about what he really should do for the war effort if anything.
Cooper and Perkins are dominant figures here as they steady very shaky direction by Oscar nominee William Wyler. The pacing is a mess as it literally takes about minutes before anything intriguing takes place. An extensive background of the Quaker way of life seems to be the primary focus through most of the picture.
Finally a decision is needed as to what the family is going to do when the Confederacy starts to invade their lives. Overall a good film from the period. It remains one of the more curious and interesting pictures of the American cinema. This fine adaptation of "Friendly Persuasion" is quite satisfying, with thoughtful drama that takes place in an interesting and believable setting, plus many good lighter moments.
Though the story ultimately focuses on just a couple of the characters' concerns, along the way it provides an effective overview of their lives as a whole. Gary Cooper is surprisingly believable in a somewhat atypical role as a Quaker father. Dorothy McGuire is well-cast as the sometimes fretful mother, and Anthony Perkins works very well as the son torn between his family and what he perceives as his duty. Walter Catlett is a bit over-the-top as the organ salesman, but he is entertaining, and his character is used well.
In fact, the subplot with the organ is an interesting contrast with the main plot about the war, mirroring a couple of the same themes in a much less consequential context. The setting in the American Civil War is well-conceived, and the family's dilemmas are portrayed sympathetically and convincingly.
It is such a nice contrast with the type of movie that has to make its points through heavy-handed, contrived events, and it offers some worthwhile thoughts without pretending to offer easy, superficial answers. Besides all that, it's a thoroughly enjoyable movie because of the many lighter, amusing moments. Director William Wyler and the cast work them in nicely with the more serious material, and the film maintains a harmonious balance throughout.
It all makes for a very worthy and memorable picture. Lots of tens here in the ratings, and quite a few very dismissive ratings and reviews. I'll land somewhere in the middle. Let's start out with the negatives. Admittedly, there aren't many. I felt the first half of the film was a bit slow. Too homespun, too sentimental, perhaps too unrealistic. Definitely too long. I also disliked the part of the film where the son Anthony Perkins is overwhelmed by Marjorie Mains' daughters.
That degree of silliness simply didn't belong in this picture. Handled correctly, it could have been a decent interlude, but this was almost slapstick. What did I like about the picture? I enjoyed seeing Gary Cooper in this type of role. It lent a nice balance to his career, and was certainly better than the Cooper film that followed it -- "Love In The Afternoon".
I'm also very fond of Dorothy McGuire, and was excellent and believable in this film. Young Richard Eyer did well as the young son here; he was a cute little actor It was nice to see Robert Middleton get a "good guy" role for a change. I was turned off by the role Walter Catlett played as Professor Quigley; again, too silly for this film. Joel Fluellen as Enoch was good, but seemed to disappear too early in the film.
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