Bunny Sunshine Movies

The Southerner was Jean Renoir's favorite of his American films. Shot on location, the film stars Zachary Scott as a sharecropper who yearns for a place of his own. On a tiny, scraggly patch of land, Scott tries to make a go of things, along with his wife Betty Field, his grandmother Beulah Bondi, and his children Jean Vanderwilt (aka Bunny Sunshine) and Jay Gilpin. Though a proud, independent man, Scott is forced by circumstance to seek help from neighboring farmer J. Carroll Naish, whose life experience have left him bitter and vituperative. The two men become enemies, but are reunited by their mutual love of fishing. Scott suffers a setback when a rainstorm destroys his cotton crop. He is about to go wearily back to working for others (specifically, factory owner Charles Kemper, who also narrates the film) when he is convinced by his never-say-die family to persevere on his own. Director Jean Renoir also wrote the script for The Southerner--in fluent English rather than French, as mental exercise. Told at a leisurely, unhurried pace, the film is the one American Renoir effort that comes closest to his "slice of life" dramas of the 1930s. The Southerner was not a box office hit, but did win the effusive praise of critics, not to mention the Venice Film Festival "best picture" award. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

From a novel of the same name by "Elizabeth", the film begins in 1914, with Bette Davis cast as vain, flighty society woman Fanny Trellis. Informed by Jewish-American financier Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) that her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) has stolen money to pay his gambling debts, Fanny marries Job, securing his promise that he won't prosecute her thieving sibling. Angered by Fanny's agreeing to this loveless union, Trippy runs off to join the army, and is killed during World War I. Fanny holds Skeffington responsible for her brother's death, and demands a divorce with a generous cash settlement. Despite Job's oft-repeated belief that "a woman is only beautiful when she is loved," Fanny uses her coquettish beauty to flit indiscriminately from man to man. While on a sailing trip with her latest beau, Fanny comes down with diphtheria. The disease destroys her facial beauty, and before long the shallow Fanny is left completely alone. Her self-centered efforts to reunite all of her old boyfriends for a party is a failure due to her pathetic middle-aged efforts to be kittenish, and the grotesqueness of the mounds of facial makeup she apples. Meanwhile, Skeffington, who has resettled in Europe with his daughter, is captured by the Nazis and placed in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, returning to the US totally blind and utterly penniless. A chastened Fanny comes back to her husband, promising to care for him for the rest of his life. Most TV prints of Mr. Skeffington run 127 minutes; the videocassette and cable TV versions have been restored to the original length. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi