1934 - The good old days in the South, John Ford's JUDGE PRIEST

Tough film to watch. The old south after the Civil War is a wonderful place where happy black people sit around sing spirituals and cook fried chicken for their white employers. Will Rodgers, the Garrison Keillor of his day plays folksy wise Judge Billy Priest. Sitting in his courtroom dishing out justice, Judge Priest solves the problems of a young southern couple thwarted in love because she comes from the "wrong side of the tracks." He also saves a wrongly convicted man from going to jail when he reveals that man to be a hero of the Confederacy.





The whole idea of a film celebrating the idealized southern lifestyle where blacks and whites know their place in a southern community is laughable. Towards the end of the film the town celebrates the southern Confederacy with a parade of waving Confederate flags thus entering a special fantasy world that ignores the whole reason the Civil War was ever fought.

John Ford was a director who usually needed to be kept somewhat under control or he would tend to run amok with lots of corny jokes and sentimental slop running throughout his films. Ford's famous visual style is not present in this film.