"Another Part of the Forest" is a prequel
to "The Little Foxes" but made seven years later and it feels like an
attempt to do a reprise of Wyler's classic with Ann Blyth, Edmond
O'Brien and Dan Duryea trying to fill the shoes of Miss Davis, Charles
Dingle and Carl Benton Reid. Actually O'Brien is very good and Duryea,
who played the son of the character he's playing here in Wyler's film,
isn't bad. Only Blyth lets the side down. Their parents are a gruff
Fredric March and a dotty (and excellent) Florence Eldridge.
The
movie purports to show how the nasty Hubbards got to be so nasty but
there really isn't anything here we haven't seen before. This is more
like a remake than a prequel and under Michael Gordon's limp direction
it's hard to tell if this would have been any good on the stage. What's
fairly clear is that this is second-rate Hellman and Gordon does nothing
to make it cinematic. Still, in its fevered bad movie kind of way it's
actually quite entertaining. No family ever had so many skeletons
rattling around in the cupboard and letting skeletons loose can be good
fun. Of course, perhaps Hellman intended it all as a joke or maybe the humour was simply unintentional.
"Another Part of the Forest" is a prequel
to "The Little Foxes" but made seven years later and it feels like an
attempt to do a reprise of Wyler's classic with Ann Blyth, Edmond
O'Brien and Dan Duryea trying to fill the shoes of Miss Davis, Charles
Dingle and Carl Benton Reid. Actually O'Brien is very good and Duryea,
who played the son of the character he's playing here in Wyler's film,
isn't bad. Only Blyth lets the side down. Their parents are a gruff
Fredric March and a dotty (and excellent) Florence Eldridge.
The
movie purports to show how the nasty Hubbards got to be so nasty but
there really isn't anything here we haven't seen before. This is more
like a remake than a prequel and under Michael Gordon's limp direction
it's hard to tell if this would have been any good on the stage. What's
fairly clear is that this is second-rate Hellman and Gordon does nothing
to make it cinematic. Still, in its fevered bad movie kind of way it's
actually quite entertaining. No family ever had so many skeletons
rattling around in the cupboard and letting skeletons loose can be good
fun. Of course, perhaps Hellman intended it all as a joke or maybe the humour was simply unintentional.
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