The film’s dialogue hasn’t aged too well – June’s ferocious rage at Jack upon returning to her family after a tragedy is unbelievably clunky – but the conflicts are engaging, as are the performances by a really interesting group of veteran character actors and newcomers – all shot in brilliant colour.Īs Mriam Hopkins’ fiery persona blazed onscreen in the first 3-strip Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935), waifish Sylvia Sidney ( Fury, Sabotage)) glows as she progresses from farm girl to a more learned woman in the film’s second half, only to be torn between her new ‘civilized’ self and the sister wanting cold revenge for a terrible death. Unique to the plot, though, is the introduction not only of another love interest – an industrialist determined to build a railroad through land held by both warring families – but the novelty is of progress being the reason the feud ultimately runs out of steam, and causes young and old family members to ponder whether all the hate and bloodshed is worth the agony.Ī promise of emancipation through education is what industrialist Jack Hale (Fred McMurray) uses to lure pretty June Tolliver (Sylvia Sydney, and her big sad eyes) from the family cabin to the city, where she stays with his sister, even though one suspects June would’ve left either way, after watching her mother reduced to a sad and tired figure in the household.Īt odds with June’s hunger for cerebral activities and her growing affection for Jack is her intended beau Dave Tolliver (Henry Fonda), a young farmer with traditional values, and one willing to keep up the feud in spite of being responsible for the grand spark that’s kept the Falins and Tollivers at war.

McCoy feud that has two families losing members in cruel tit-for-tat revenge exchanges. What’s delightfully surprisingly about Trail is how engaging the film remains, in spite of being ostensibly a variation on the Hatfield vs. Selznick extravaganza, The Garden of Allah). Perhaps because of the novel’s recognition factor and its setting in a rural mountain town, Paramount figured Trail of the Lonesome Pine was a good choice for the first 3-strip Technicolor film to be shot on location, so the production became one of five 3-strip Technicolor productions released in 1936 (the others being The Coronation of King George VI, The Dancing Pirate, Ramona, and the David O. DeMille, and more interestingly in 1923, with Mary Miles Minter appearing in her second-last film before disappearing from the silver screen after her alleged involvement in the William Desmond Taylor murder mess. John Fox Jr.’s novel was a favourite during the early years of cinema, and was filmed three times during the silent years: in 1914, in 1916 by Cecil B.

The trail of the lonesome pine 1914