The Stranger's Return (1933)

How sad is this?

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Blistering performances.

A King Vidor Metro production, but it sure smells like 20th Century Fox, with its rural setting, leisurely pacing, and prosaic dialog--it's even based on a novel by, and co-screenwritten by, Phil Stong, who wrote 20th's "State Fair." Lionel Barrymore, wearing a fake beard that wouldn't fool an eight-year-old, is the patriarch of a successful Iowa farm, a Civil War vet (just barely--at 85, he'd have been 17 in 1865) saddled with a troublesome family he lives with, including a wonderful Beulah Bondi, as a calculating shrew. Granddaughter Miriam Hopkins, a divorcée, comes to visit from New York and falls in love with both the farm and married neighbor Franchot Tone, while hired hand Stu Erwin drinks and provides the modest comic relief. The writing's less than first-rate- -scenes just end, and there's more detail to the workings of farm life than necessary--but it's a quiet, touching character study, and Hopkins, often given to histrionics elsewhere, is restrained and appealing. The characters' dilemmas feel real, and the bittersweet ending resonates.

I've always enjoyed old films, but somehow I came to think of Miriam Hopkins as only playing ditzy roles. Lately, however, I've seen her in a few of her earlier films where she played normal people, and I must admit she was quite good...as she is here, where she plays a young woman who has been living in the big city, but returns to the farm to visit her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore). She falls in love with a married man (Franchot Tone) and for that reason, and others, realizes that perhaps the rural setting is where she needs to be. But there are the beginnings of a scandal, and then two of the reasons she thinks the rural life is for her disappear. This is one of those somewhat slow 1933-era type films, but I enjoyed the story. The big let down here is the ending. Once the 2 things she has come to love about the rural setting disappear, will she stay? And if so, why?Hopkins and Barrymore are quite charming here, although it may take you a bit to get used to Barrymore's huge beard. Franchot Tone does nicely as the married man. Several people mentioned being impressed with Stuart Erwin as an alcoholic farmhand; I don't see anything impressive about the performance at all. Beulah Bondi plays the busy-body relative here, not the typically warm-hearted mother-type we usually saw her as. Grant Mitchell has a smaller role as a relative who is a passive lawyer.I'm not saying this is a great film, but it just feels comfortable. For a bit it seemed to be going off-track when Barrymore seemed to be slipping into senility...but that ultimately turned around nicely. I like Barrymore, so this film was a treat.

The stranger in The Stranger's Return is Miriam Hopkins who newly divorced visits grandfather Lionel Barrymore's farm. While there she falls for the neighboring farmer Franchot Tone who is just slightly married to Irene Hervey. Therein lies the story.Barrymore is his usual cantankerous self who has survived most of his relatives including his own children and spouse. There's a whole lot of grasping relatives who'd like a piece of his considerable estate including that farm.This film really belongs to Lionel Barrymore who is going on all eight cylinders of curmudgeonliness. For once Franchot Tone is not in formal dress though he and Hopkins seem to lack a certain chemistry.I'd watch this for Barrymore.

A delicate film, plenty of little marvellous details. I do not know why we cannot watch this film more times on television, because it is, in my opinion, the best film that King Vidor ever filmed. And I could watch it again and again.