A Charles Bickford jag from Brute Force (1947). Loaded with Oscar nominations and a decent rating at IMDB so I could be forgiven for having expectations. Only Jane Wyman (The Lost Weekend (1945)) came away with Best Actress though. Directed by Jean Negulesco from a script by Irma von Cube and Allen Vincent who adapted Elmer Harris's stage play.
A series of segments introduces us to a small village of Scots (?) in Nova Scotia where people farm when they're not hauling in boatloads of cod. Doctor Lew Ayres (All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)) has the post war blues and is too cultured for the ignorant locals. He encounters deaf and mute Wyman, daughter of struggling farmer Bickford, niece of Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)) and teaches her sign language and lip reading. Stephen McNally (No Way Out (1950)) plays a lad with a mean streak who all the girls have eyes for. There's some very nasty behaviour (including a rape and a murder) that is resolved overly neatly. The final scene, where the remaining non-traditional family ride off into the sunset on a horse-drawn cart, put me in mind of The Night of the Hunter (1955).
Bosley Crowther. The stage play was not great. A mix of grotesque, banal, lurid. IMDB trivia: "While the film won the best actress Oscar, it lost in the other 11 categories in which it was nominated. This is still, as at 2024, a record (tied with Becket (1964)) for the most number of categories lost by a single film."
