The Southerner

The Southerner (1945) is an American drama you can watch online on iFILM. French director Jean Renoir made it in the US — and produced what critics at the time called the most unsentimental picture of sharecropper life Hollywood had put on screen.

Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) has spent years picking cotton on other people's land. A dying uncle tells him it's time to work his own. Sam loads his wife (Betty Field), two kids, a grandmother and a dog into a battered truck and claims a patch of wilderness that hasn't been farmed in years. The first growing season brings sickness, a catastrophic flood and a hostile neighbour (J. Carrol Naish) who won't share so much as a cup of cornmeal. None of it is softened.

Renoir was up for the Academy Award for Best Director — a rare honour for a European filmmaker on an American studio picture. The film, based on George Sessions Perry's novel Hold Autumn in Your Hand, takes the side of endurance over inspiration. Watch The Southerner (1945) online on iFILM.