The Cabin in the Cotton (1932)

Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Dorothy Jordan, Berton Churchill, Hardie Albright, Dorothy Peterson, David Landau, Russell Simpson.

Clunky sharecropping melodrama “educating” audiences about the disparity between landowners and tenants, often reduced to self-important (if reasonable) pleas for reform and an imbalanced love triangle. Means well, but it’s overwritten, and suffers from an uncharismatic and unresponsive performance from pasty Richard Bathelmess in the lead…but it’s not like he’s the only one floundering in the woods. In one of her early film roles, pre-fame Bette Davis runs circles around all her co-stars—would the line, “I’d like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair,” be half as famous today if not for her impeccable drawling delivery? A few good scenes emerge from the muddle, and the music is gratifyingly diverse, but it’s a case of significance on stand-by, a treatment begging for greater depths of intelligence and awareness. Scripted by playwright Paul Green.

49/100