Main Cast: Fredric March, Dan Duryea, Edmond O'Brien, Ann Blyth, Florence Eldridge
Release Year: 1948
Country: US
Run Time: 106 minutes
Plot
Another Part Of The Forest begins some twenty years before the events of Lillian Hellman's play and movie The Little Foxes and shows how that film's Hubbard family became the ruthless, greedy lot they were. It's fifteen years after the Civil War, and the Hubbards dominate their small Southern town financially, if not socially; The patriarch of the family (Fredric March) sold salt for $8 a pound to the Confederate Army at a time when they needed it most. Edmond O'Brien and Dan Duryea play his sons, the former as mean as his father, the latter and younger one a weakling. When the elder child finds out that his father was responsible for the death of Southern troops during the war, he threatens to expose the truth unless the family fortune is placed in his hands. In the end, only Hubbard's wife (Florence Eldridge) stands by her husband during his inevitable fall, and she banishes her own children from their house. Brilliant acting by all, especially March, Duryea, and O'Brien, plus a sharp script, make this unrelentingly grim melodrama fascinating to watch. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Robert F. Boyle - Art Director, Bernard Herzbrun - Art Director, Yvonne Wood - Costume Designer, Ben Chapman - First Assistant Director, Michael Gordon - Director, Miton Carruth - Editor, Daniele Amfitheatrof - Composer (Music Score), Bud Westmore - Makeup, Hal Mohr - Cinematographer, Jerry Bresler - Producer, John P. Austin - Set Designer, Russell A. Gausman - Set Designer, Leslie I. Carey - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard DeWeese - Sound/Sound Designer, Vladimir Pozner - Screenwriter, Lillian Hellman - Play Author
Set in the fictional town of Bowden, Alabama in June 1880, the plot focuses on the wealthy, ruthless, and innately evil Hubbard family and their rise to prominence. Patriarch Marcus Hubbard was born into poverty and toiled at menial labor while teaching himself Greek philosophy and the basics of business acumen. He ultimately made his fortune by exploiting his fellow Southerners during the Civil War. Shrewd, amoral elder son Benjamin is plotting to usurp his father's power and steal his money by revealing a dark secret from his days as a war profiteer. Younger son Oscar, a Ku Klux Klan supporter, lusts for whore Laurette Sincee rather than penniless neighbor Birdie Bagtry, who desperately is looking for a loan on her family's valuable land, a situation Benjamin hopes to exploit. Regina is the sexually active daughter who wants to live in Chicago with Birdie's brother, former Confederate officer John Bagtry, a move discouraged by her father, who has a disturbingly unnatural closeness to the girl. When all his offspring turn on Marcus in one way or another, their mother Lavinia - the only one in the household with any sense of morality - tells her vicious children she hopes never to see them again.
Thomas M. Pryor of the New York Times called the film "a compelling entertainment" and added, "Vladimir Pozner has preserved the spirit of the play in his screen treatment and Michael Gordon's direction gives a fluency to scenes which might easily have become static due to the profuseness of the dialogue." [1]
Time said, "Under Michael Gordon's direction it is a nearly perfect example of how to film a play. There is hardly a shot which does not set up visual tension against the lashing, steel-spring dialogue; there is not a single performance which is short of adequate; the work of Miss Eldridge, Mr. O'Brien and Betsey Blair, as a shaky-minded neighbor, is much more." [2]
TV Guide stated, "This utterly depressing film is salvaged through intense performances that rivet the viewer, along with the literate, acerbic script." [3]
Awards and nominations
Screenwriter Vladimir Pozner was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards, for Best Written American Drama and the Robert Meltzer Award for the Screenplay Dealing Most Ably with Problems of the American Scene.
