My friend and I watched this movie, a favorite of hers, which I had never viewed, and we both liked it. I always like Brian Keith in every movie he was in whether that was action, rough-and-tumble, as well as fatherly roles like "Family Affairs", maybe especially "Hard Castle and McCormick," which I loved even though it didn't last long as a series. I realize, now, how critical the Nielson Ratings and the deep pockets of one's sponsor truly are.
Keith is so in character, I worried at one point where he broke his leg in the story, whether he was still doing his own stunt work at age 44. I certainly hope not.
Vera Miles sans makeup, hair in a bun, acted like a woman used to roughing it as a wife, mom and woman - not always liking that reality, but continually re-accepting it as part and parcel of her love for Cam. The movie does a good job of demonstrating that both life and love come at a price, but that the risk of seeking what you really want in life is worth the cost.
Even the dog, the blackbird and the bear had their own wranglers in this local-color flick.
I liked the idea of being totally invested in a dream, in idealism, in fervent values, to point where you would stake everything, life itself, to make that dream actually happen - even against overwhelming odds, formidable, moneyed interests, calloused and remorseless antagonists.
The Canadian geese stole every scene they were in. Pythagoras would revere their straight lines of flight, each new group parallel to the flight above them.
The movie made me think of a saying on the back of a T shirt I observed today at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure for Cancel in Kalamazoo, something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are not as important as what lies within us."
Tremendous cast: Brandon De Wilde, Vera Miles, Ed Wynn, and Brian Keith as well as Tom Skerritt at age 31. He looks like a young kid.
The movie looks and sounds exactly like what it truly is - a Disney film from 1965, where music telegraphs every upcoming dramatic moment, and violence, blood and gore and so forth are not shown.
At the same time, in our age of IRS corruption and interminable political partisanship, it is heart-warming to see two people renew their love for and commitment to each other, again and again, knowing that, as Langston Hughes wrote, "Life ain't been no crystal staircase."
Such a total lack of pretense in this movie! That sort of pure, ingenuous sincerity, is rare in the world of film and in life where deep concerns for profit, market share, pragmatism, and the every-man-and-woman-for-himself-and-herself world many adopt, crushes out the little important things in life like tenderness, patience, and honesty.
Many of the scenes in this movie have the look of a filmed stage play, and I say that in a complimentary way.
If our local Civic Theatre cast and acted out this dramatic vehicle, it would be tantamount to furnishing audiences with a far more innocent age, a more pure one where people say exactly what they mean and where people mean exactly what they say, even the villains.
I yearn for such unaffected directness.
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