Watch Tobacco Road For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

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

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

John Ford directed this adaptation of a hit play about a family of dirt poor toothless Southern farmers. Charley Grapewin is great and carries the film on his shoulders. Elizabeth Patterson gives an enjoyable (and sometimes sensitive) turn as his wife. William Tracy plays a savage character who grates on the nerves but he does a good job at it. Ward Bond is funny as a neighbor married to one of their daughters. He has the movie's most crowd-pleasing scene when he puts Tracy in his place. Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney have small roles. I think Tierney spoke less than twenty words the whole film.Any comparison between this film and Ford's classic from the year before, Grapes of Wrath, is absurd. Beyond the very superficial similarities, they are nothing alike. This doesn't have the gravitas or artistry of that film. The closest it comes is the scene when Grapewin and Patterson talk about two of their children who left home and never returned. The rest is a grotesque comedy about people that are almost cartoon characters more than humans.Obviously not for the easily offended among us. This film peddles in just about every Southern stereotype you can think of. Having grown up in the South with relatives not too far removed from the types of characters displayed in this, I'm not really bothered by it. Stereotypes generally have some basis in truth, no matter how much we don't want to admit it. Amusing at times, moving once or twice, but not the masterpiece it wants to be. See it for Grapewin's energetic performance if nothing else.

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.

If you took "The Grapes of Wrath", "L'il Abner". and Laurel & Hardy and shook them up together, you'd probably end up with an approximation of this film. During production, some thought it might even top the previous year's success with "The Grapes of Wrath", both directed by John Ford. But it was only moderately successful in the minds of most critics and at the box office. Perhaps this was, in part, due to the absence of any recognized leading man or woman. Tottering,shaky-voiced, Charlie Grapewin, as Jeteer Lester, was the main character, and dominated the dialogue in most scenes. But, normally, he served as a secondary character actor, appearing in such films as "The Good Earth", "The Wizard of Oz", and "The Grapes of Wrath". To me, he should have won the Best Actor Oscar. What about the film as a whole? It certainly had a lot more humor than most Oscar winners. Perhaps that was part of it's problem. Comedies such as this and musicals generally weren't considered Oscar material. Its main problem, as I see it, is the characterization of Gene Tierney as Jeeter's 23 year-old seemingly retarded daughter, Ellie May. At first she is seen dragging herself across the dirt road toward neighbor Luv(Ward Bond), who is unhappily married to her 12 year old sister, Pearl. Yet, later, she seems almost normal, running across fields, and even says a few words. In the book, she is characterized as having a large cleft lip, so why she is an old maid at 23. If the screen writers didn't like this characterization, I think I would have made her a deaf mute, in anticipation of the later "Johnny Belinda". Some men might even prefer such a wife(ho,ho). Evidently, the screenplay differs in quite a few details from the book, a summary of which I have read. For one thing, the ending is quite different. It's upbeat in the film. In the book, they are about to lose their farm when they are burned up in a house fire, and grandma is run over by the reckless driving of their son, Dude. Since they didn't seem to have any meaningful future, perhaps this ending is offered as a blessing in disguise. In the book, it's ironic that Jeeter and his wife are fixated on how their corpse will look and be treated, then they burn up in a fire.I thought William Tracy did an excellent job in his characterization of Dude, although some seem to think his frequent mania was overacting.Dana Andrews, as Captain Tim, ends up the hero, in paying the rent on the Lester's farm and giving them some money for planting materials, until they hopefully can sell a crop and get back on their feet. There is no Captain Tim in the book. Good luck. Their land is characterized as 'worn out'.I've read that it was the intention of the screen writers to create a film that was fun, yet not especially demeaning to the 'hillbillies'. Some think they succeeded, others don't.

I don't want to give this film any vote for I'm not sure what it is. If it is supposed to be funny, it fails. If it is supposed to be tragic, it fails too.However, as propaganda for "the fact" that the poor are to be blamed for being poor because they are lazy, it might work.In other words, this film is a pack of lies, in which the exploited poor, when rightfully depressed, are depicted as being lazy.But maybe this film explains America more than many other films - not the film itself though but the reaction to it. What people on earth can be stupid enough to vote republican when being poor. A majority of Americans today live very poor lives but still they don't vote communist. What do they have to loose and what would make their rich exploiters angrier than if they voted communist? I'm not a communist but if I were a voter in America I would probably vote communist just for the hell of it. As a matter of fact, I will probably vote for a party that is considered right-wing and racist just for the hell of it here in Sweden, just in order to get things moving and provoke the left to come up with a party worth voting for, for all the left parties here in Sweden have sold out to America and the "market".It's hard and desperate times for sure.