Cross Creek (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Nov 27, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Martin RittRelease Date(s)
1983 (October 15, 2024)Studio(s)
Thorn EMI Films/Universal Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B
Review
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is best known as the author of the 1938 novel The Yearling, which was adapted into a film eight years later. The novel grew out of her experiences during a period in her life that she spent in rural Florida. Her memoirs recounting these experiences form the basis of the motion picture Cross Creek.
Cross Creek opens in 1928 as Rawlings (Mary Steenburgen, Melvin and Howard) decides to leave the security of marriage to a New York writer to live, alone and undisturbed, in a remote area of Florida where she and her husband had purchased an orange grove so that she can at last indulge her passion for writing. She intends to live off the proceeds from selling the oranges.
She endures the hardships of rural life while writing day and night, yet there’s little interest from publishers for her submitted work. The residents of the region are at first wary of this outsider but eventually warm to her as she gets to know them and they trust her. Her letters to a publisher are filled with such vivid descriptions of life in Cross Creek and its colorful residents that he encourages her to write about them for publication.
Rawlings gradually develops a relationship with local hotel owner Norton Baskin (Peter Coyote, Erin Brockovich), revitalizes her land through hard physical work, and becomes friends with her housekeeper, Geechee (Alfre Woodard, Annabelle). She also gets to know the backwoods Turner family, including the father, Marsh (Rip Torn, Men in Black), and their young teenage daughter, Ellie (Dana Hill, Shoot the Moon).
The theme of the film is how, in stages, the writer comes to love her new life and how it inspires her to find her own literary voice. Steenburgen embodies this feisty, stubborn woman unafraid to stand up for herself and willing to get her hands dirty cleaning a ramshackle house and removing debris from the creek to improve irrigation.
The film’s leisurely pace is essential to show the locals’ gradual acceptance of Rawlings and her dawning admiration for their values and dignity. She’s initially condescending to Geechee as an inconsequential servant and is often downright rude to Baskin, a true southern gentleman who makes his interest in her quite clear. In anger, she shoots a hog belonging to Marsh Turner, then displays brutal honesty as she suggests how to make things right.
The screenplay raises several questions. As portrayed in the script, Rawlings is an enigma. What was her life like with her first husband? What prompted her to abandon a life of comfort and security? Was it necessary for her to get up her personal relationships in order to write? Was she really proficient at painting and carpentry and physically able to lift heavy logs?
Director Martin Ritt has elicited very fine performances from the cast. Steenburgen conveys a combination of steely independence, empathy for the locals, and focused dedication to her craft as she negotiates a new and different world. Woodard is hugely entertaining as Geechee, a woman with unbridled energy and a simple sense of what friendship means. Torn is a man who loves his family but must balance that love with practicality as he deals with Ellie’s pet deer. Malcolm McDowell, who was then married to Steenburgen, turns up in one scene as Max Perkins, the publisher who travels to Cross Creek to tell her personally that he will publish one of her stories.
There’s a gentle tone to Cross Creek that reflects Rawlings’ musings on the area and its inhabitants. Some scenes focus on the beauty of the Florida wilderness. Leonard Rosenman’s evocative score adds resonance to the images and captures the lush, unspoiled environment in musical poetry.
Cross Creek was shot by director of photography John A. Alonzo on 35 mm film with spherical lenses, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray picture is sharp, with good detail. There are no physical imperfections to impair enjoyment. The Florida backwoods look especially beautiful when Rawlings rides in a small boat through the marshes. Period cars and clothing set the film in the time period of the late 1920s.
The soundtrack is English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Dialogue is clear and distinct. Steenburgen’s narration ties the sequences together and quotes passages from Rawlings’ memoir. The sounds of chirping birds are prominent in most of the outdoor scenes. As Rawlings and some helpers clear debris from the creek, there are grunts and sounds of heavy logs being moved. Later, the sound of water lapping through a freshly dug ditch is the payoff for the hard work. A dramatic gun shot pierces the quiet of the woods, and the Turner children scamper through underbrush to corral a pet deer that escapes from its pen. Leonard Rosenman’s music nicely adds to the gentle mood of the film with its often moving arrangements.
Bonus materials on the Region A Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber Studio Classics include the following:
- Audio Commentary by Julie Kirgo and Peter Hankoff
- Cross Creek: A Look Back with Mary Steenburgen (17:08)
- Trailer (2:28)
- Plenty Trailer (2:24)
- Tender Mercies Trailer (2:22)
- The River Trailer (3:30)
Audio Commentary – Film historians Julie Kirgo and Peter Hankoff start their commentary by noting that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the subject of Cross Creek, is best known for the novel, The Yearling, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. Cross Creek, too, was a bestseller in its time—pre-World War II, when stories about American values were popular. Rawlings and her husband were both journalists who worked mostly in the Midwest and the South. In the film, they break up because he doesn’t want to go to Florida, when in fact he lived with his wife in Florida for five years. The film “is the story of a liberated woman.” For dramatic effect, it compresses time. The film received mixed to good reviews but didn’t do well at the box office, primarily because it was up against tough competition. Other films in release at the time included The Outsiders, E.T., Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Risky Business, and The Right Stuff. Martin Ritt directed many types of films but tended to favor stories set in the South, where he attended college. He was a “classic New York progressive” who was blacklisted from TV during the McCarthy communist witch hunt era and made a living teaching at the Actors Studio, which had fostered Marlon Brando, Rip Torn, Anne Bancroft, Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters and many others. Dana Hill, who plays Ellie, had a form of diabetes that retarded her growth, enabling her to play children well into young adulthood (she was 20 years old when she appeared in Cross Creek). Both Rip Torn and Alfre Woodard received Best Supporting Actor nominations for their work in Cross Creek. Other nominations included Best Original Score and Best Costume Design. The commentators discuss some of the major events that were occurring in the world at the time the film was released. They agree that a prime flaw in the film is not making clear early on that Rawlings was the author of The Yearling. They feel that the information is too subtly incorporated and might be missed by viewers.
Cross Creek: A Look Back – Actor Mary Steenburgen reminisces about her experiences making Cross Creek. She read The Yearling when she was a child and spoke to the real Norton Baskin, who provided considerable insight into the character of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. She was hard-drinking, stubborn, and gutsy. Steenburgen wanted to show both the writer’s good and bad qualities. Rawlings, an outsider when she arrived in Florida, was eventually accepted by the locals. The area was “exotic,”—lush with multiple shades of green. The film is about a writer trying to “tame” a little piece of it. “The sensuality of that place was so palpable.” Martin Ritt, who was blacklisted during the HUAC hearings, had the ability to be both idealistic and real. According to Steenburgen, he “was a dream to work with.” He loved actors. Working with Rip Torn, Steenburgen never knew what to expect, since he brought different nuances to each take. Alfre Woodard was risk-taking and fun. Peter Coyote had a “southern sleepy-eyed thing going.” About 70% to 80% of the film was shot hand-held. Cross Creek was screened at Cannes and was received enthusiastically.
Cross Creek reminded me of Little Women, a novel with a feminist subtext, in which a young woman is determined to become a published writer yet doesn’t realize the best material lies right before her. The film unfortunately omits information about Rawlings that would have provided a richer characterization. Lovingly shot by director of photography John A. Alonzo, the milieu is very much a character in itself. Conflicts never achieve monumental proportions but deal with day-to-day obstacles, so there are no dramatic pyrotechnics. Instead, many of the episodes portray simple people, their humanity, and the journey Rawlings takes to find success as a writer.
- Dennis Seuling