Deep Valley (1947)
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC| 4:3 | 720x480 | 4500 kbps | 4.4Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps
01:44:00 | USA | Drama
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC| 4:3 | 720x480 | 4500 kbps | 4.4Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps
01:44:00 | USA | Drama
Uneducated and poor, Libby lives a sheltered life in a broken down shack with her unloving parents. When a work crew of San Quentin convicts arrives to put in a new road, she takes an interest in Barry, a wild and uncontrollable young man. Despite the advances of upstanding engineer Jeff Barker, Libby opts for Barry and helps hide him when he escapes.
Director: Jean Negulesco
Cast: Ida Lupino, Dane Clark, Wayne Morris, Fay Bainter, Henry Hull, Willard Robertson, John Alvin, Leonard Bremen, Clancy Cooper, Eddie Dunn, Ralph Dunn, Ross Ford, William Haade, Douglas Kennedy, Bob Lowell, Ian MacDonald, Rory Mallinson, Jack Mower, Harry Strang, Ray Teal
Extras:
- Trailer
This story, based on a novel by California author Dan Totheroh, could have failed miserably if it had not been cast correctly, since the entire tale hangs on the believability of the girl played by Ida Lupino. Jean Negulesco does his usual excellent job of directing. But directing would not have sufficed, if the entire film had not been suffused with the mysterious 'Lupino Essence'. Many words come to mind to try to describe what she does on screen, words like 'integrity', 'intelligence', perceptive', 'authentic', 'genuine', 'spontaneous and uncontrived'. But how does one define magic? Lupino is the traumatised daughter of two quarrelling and cantankerous people who live on different floors of a tumbledown farmhouse in a deep and isolated valley in the north of California. The mother and father have not gone upstairs or downstairs to see one another for seven years, and Lupino is their only go-between, which has reduced her to extreme shyness, withdrawal, and stuttering. Fay Bainter plays the mother very well, with her expressive eyes the size of saucers, that is, saucers which are always sliding around all over the place, as if on shipboard in a storm. The profound isolation of the family is shortly to come to an end, because one of those California coastal highways is being constructed, with much dynamiting, landslides, and convict labour with picks on the obdurate rocks. The road will go through their front meadow, and they will actually see people! The love-starved and pathetic Lupino falls for an escaped convict, brilliantly portrayed by Dane Clark. Lupino's father is played by Henry Hull, who is chiefly remembered for appearing in 'The Fountainhead' (1949), two years later. Here he has little scope to be memorable. This is a very harrowing and moving tale of desperation, both emotional and of the life-and-death variety, as Lupino and Clark struggle to prevent his being shot or captured. It is a doomed love story between two young people who are at the very extremes of life. The film is superb in every way, and qualifies as a minor classic. If only Negulesco had stayed with this kind of intense dramatic films instead of wasting his time with such later things as the appalling and revolting cream-puff, 'Daddy Long Legs' (1955).
~ robert-temple-1
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