The man who directed such masterworks as The Rules of the Game and La Grande illusion, Jean Renoir, should have purveyed a better Hollywood drama than The Southerner (1945), derived from a novel by George Sessions Perry. Zachary Scott and Betty Field have no real appeal as a Southern couple trying to support a family on miserable farmland. Even in ’45 this post-Depression picture had nothing new to say, and to me it gets tiring.

On the other hand, Renoir was a mostly serious man, and an artist, and The Southerner is at least a serious movie with a touch of art. Its outdoor shots are terrific. But the French auteur resembles a Southerner named William Faulkner in that he stopped proving he was a great artist after a certain period of time.