The Yearling (1946)

Directed by Clarence Brown. Starring Claude Jarman Jr., Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Forrest Tucker, Chill Wills, Henry Travers, Margaret Wycherly, Donn Gift.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Pultizer Prize-winning story of 19th-century pioneer farmers in the woodlands of Florida is a rare example of a sentimental tearjerker that works. Father Peck is warm and attentive but mother Wyman has become hard and bleak after losing all but one of her children; the child that remains, Jody (Jarman), longs for an animal companion, which he finally gets in the form of an orphaned fawn. Sensitive and heart-warming, well-performed, and gloriously photographed in lush Technicolor (the dazzling “deer run” set to Felix Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Scherzo is a real treat). Length is a minor issue—almost an hour has passed before the adorable little critter first shows up—and the colloquialism-heavy dialogue can sometimes stick in the actors’ craws, but the overall experience is quite special for child and adult alike. The photography and art direction won Academy Awards, and Jarman was given a special Oscar for juvenile performance. June Lockhart (no stranger to productions involving animals) has an uncredited bit part.

81/100