The Southerner (1945)

Jean Renoir’s “The Southerner”

Thematic Elements: 

After escaping Europe during WWII, Jean Renoir found a new home in Hollywood. He brought the attitude of using poetic realism to depict French society to the American soundstage, focusing on the American Dream and the attitude and life of the everyday American. He sees this attitude in Tucker, the farmer who goes from working on someone else’s farm to setting up his own, and thereby trying out his own version of the American Dream. Tucker believes hard work can bring about success. He believes he can work for himself and make it, a true representation of the American Dream. However, his American Dream is confronted with the unpredictability of the chaos and hardship life brings. Each setback trying to bring hopelessness in the face of Tucker’s unstoppable hope and optimism. Renoir confronts Tucker with the hopelessness time after time, only for Tucker to keep moving forward. One of these confrontations is Tucker’s neighbor Devers, who continuously sabotages Tucker’s enterprise. Devers is a farmer who has reached the status that Tucker wants to achieve. However, Devers lets Tucker know the cost of his success. Devers had to face harsh early years, losing his crops, losing his wife, and even losing his son. Devers had to sacrifice everything to achieve this level of prosperity and security. He doesn’t want Tucker however to achieve what he has. He believes that Tucker’s success will negatively affect his success in that he will lose prospective land, potential hunting & fishing, etc. He believes someone else’s success will hinder his own. Renoir is potentially pointing out the downside of the American Dream, competition. Renoir seems to paint a picture of men full of contention for the things they had to give up for their security, and paranoid of that security being taken from them. Because that security is the only thing they have left. Tucker is also given an out to his American Dream. This is through his friend, Tim. Tim believes freedom (and success) comes from employment, working for someone else and making money in the short run. This money is able to buy him anything he wants, which he believes to be true freedom. Renoir is confronting his protagonist with another hinderance to his economic dream, the temptation to give up and work for someone else. The economic freedoms given to Americans comes with the harsh reality of monopolizing industrialization. The more powerful you become, the more you can suppress other power and freedom and force workers and laborers to support your American Dream, rather than their own. This is the same mentality in the neighbor, Devers. Economic freedom can only inherently cause a competition of success and suppress the economic freedom and success of others. Tucker not only faces economic competition, but the hardships that come from being self-reliant. He is not able to provide warm clothes for his family throughout the winter, he cannot provide his son with nutrition to keep him from getting ill, and he cannot combat the rain and floods that come and wash away all of his good crops. Time after time, Tucker is faced with the trials and tribulations of economic self-dependency and the brutality of his own freedom. Yet time after time, he chooses to be optimistic, believing that one day, the labor of his works will bear his own crops. Perhaps this optimism is foolish, perhaps it is necessary for survival. Renoir does not give us the answers, but instead only asks the question. In doing so, Renoir depicts America as it is; unforgiving, competitive, and selfish, as well as optimistic, self-sacrificing, and ambitious. Renoir shows the true scope of America, its coldness, and its warmth.   

Camerawork: 

The poetic realism that Renoir frequently uses in his work to depict French society, is now used here for American society. He shows an uncompromising depiction of the hardships endured by ordinary American citizens on the nadir of society. He uses poetic realism to convey both the harsh realities of the hard life of rural America as well as the resiliency and optimism of an American family fighting an uphill battle against misfortune and malice. 

Best Shot: 

The best shot in the film is when Nona can no longer handle her son’s cries of agony and walks out into the farmland and falls into the dirt. The very dirt that the family has waged its entire future upon, the dirt that must grow the fruits of their labor, the fruition of all their sacrifices.