It had been many years since I first saw this movie and even then I didn’t get to finish it, so when it popped up during a perusal through Netflix titles I put it in the instant queue and watched it over the weekend. What an awesome flick, I still love this show from 1971. I was curious about the title and looked it up on wiki. I see one that it’s from a Lead Belly song, Goodnight, Irene…
Sometimes I lives in the country
Sometimes I lives in town
Sometimes I haves a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown
and two, that the book was written by Ken Kesey, perhaps better known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Directed by Paul Newman with Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, Michael Sarrazin and Richard Jaeckel, it’s the story of a hard nosed Oregon family of gyppo loggers, the Stampers, who’s decision to keep logging despite a regional strike has put their unemployed neighbors in financial straights. Within the family their creed of ‘never give an inch’ provides for conflict too, all resolute in their sense of what’s what.
This is one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time. The work scenes are authentic, Newman and Remick’s relationship coming under added scrutiny after half brother Sarrazin arrives and questions the status quo is thought provoking, especially in the context of the larger women’s movement going on at the time. Henry Fonda is a gruff deviation from a somewhat similar role in Spencer’s Mountain. Richard Jaeckel cements his place as one of my favorite supporting actors of all time as the naive but entheustiastic Joe Be.
I realized at the end that I hadn’t ever finished it before. After a lot of tragedy and introspection about whether their hard driving manner was at fault, Hank Stamper (Newman) makes up his mind about whether he’ll continue with that mindset in rather amusing fashion and with a bit of a hand from his dad. Good stuff. One has to wonder too how different it might have been had, as considered, Sam Peckinpah directed instead.
Anyone else like this show? Have you read the book and found it to be equally compelling?
It’s one of my favorite books. I read it long ago, and it would certainly be one I would pick up again. The movie, as you say, is also good. I don’t know now to to spoiler boxes, but I’ll just say the scene when the river rises is amazing.
When I find out someone is reading the book I’ll ask, “did you get to that part?” If they say, what part? then I know they haven’t gotten to it, but if they’ve read it they say, oh god, yes, and we all shiver.
I’ve not seen the movie. I’m always hesitant to see a movie that’s adapted from a book I really love, but maybe I should check it out.
I’ve replayed that scene in my mind several dozen times over the years. It was positively riveting, what with what had just happened…
[spoiler]… to Henry. The foreshadowing was there, talking about the record tide, Joe Be(n) complaing about what he’d just done letting the rising water ruin his cherished transistor radio. Then the chainsaw floods. Even though I knew what was coming I sat mesmerized as Hank tried buddy breathing, and…
Leland later telling Hank his wife has left him… “She said she probably could have picked a better day.”[/spoiler]
Jaeckel was nominated for an Oscar for his role, though it probably had a lot to do with that one scene.
I like the book much better–it gives a greater sense of mystery to the Pacific NW that the film doesn’t quite capture. I’ve also never been much of a fan of Sarrazin so while he’s cast fairly well to type, I just don’t believe any chemistry they try to push between him and Remick. But the rest of the cast is great and this was, IIRC, the first film Newman directed that he appeared in himself and he gives the difficult material a worthy effort.
This piques my interest too, having spent some younger years working there in old growth, clear cut and replanted woods. His would be an interesting perspective.
Loved the book. It’s been decades since I read it, but I thought it was better than Cuckoo’s Nest.
If memory serves, Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test described Kesey as manically writing first draft pages day by day while zonked on LSD and then editing each sessions’ output after the drug wore off.
I first came about this movie in an odd way. One evening when I was seven years old, my aunt and uncle invited me to join my cousins and go see a movie at a drive-in. Thinking it was going to be a Disney film or some other kid-friendly flick, I accepted.
It was Sometimes a Great Notion.
I remember being mostly bored watching the movie. Most of the stuff about the strike and Stampers holding out was of little interest to me at the time. The only parts I really paid attention to were the harrowing scene where Richard Jaeckel’s character slowly drowns, the tree falls on Henry Fonda, and the final shot.
Cuckoo’s Nest, definitely. Don’t know if it also applies to SAGN. It’s interesting to read some of those lysergic first drafts, which look to me as if they served more as field notes.