By Don L. Stradley
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Martin Ritt's Conrack,
now available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time, first hit theaters in 1974. This was a time when new, brash directors
were reinventing American cinema, a time
when movie screens were likely spackled with vomit from demonically possessed
little girls, or blood from the victims of Dirty Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum. Theaters
in your neighborhood were just as likely to be playing hardcore porn as the
latest Paul Newman movie. Ritt's simple
tale of an optimistic white teacher in a schoolroom of dirt poor black students
was a success just by squeaking through to its birth.
Looking at it 40 years later, one is struck by two
things, namely, Jon Voight's relentless energy and goodwill as the big-hearted
teacher, and the very realistic performances from the kids. Even while acknowledging the film's uneven
tone, or what one critic deemed "a crazy quilt of naturalism, farce, and
soap opera all jumbled together," one is still intrigued by Conrack. Maybe the idea that a caring soul might try to educate some people who
would otherwise remain ignorant strikes a primal cord within us. Maybe there's something irresistible about
sheltered folks suddenly realizing there is more to the world than their dirty
little backwater. Or maybe, and this
might trump all the other maybes, we all hated school so much that we wish our
own lives had been enriched, even briefly, by someone like Conrack.
Pat Conroy, a young idealist, takes a teaching position
on a remote island in a South Carolina river delta. He's vowed to grow his hair until the war
stops (the story takes place in 1969) and the locals look at him as if they're
seeing a mythical animal up close, for a towering blonde white man on an island
made up almost entirely of blacks is as odd as a unicorn. The locals can't even pronounce his name,
which creates the movie's title. The
newly dubbed Conrack fends off their suspicions with a grin as wide as the
Bible belt, and then sets about teaching "the babies," as these fifth
through eighth graders are called. He's
shocked to find out the level of his students' ignorance - they can't read,
they know nothing about life beyond the island, they've never heard of Babe
Ruth or Halloween, have never played football, and, Heaven forbid, they don't
even know that coffee comes from Brazil.
Based on Pat Conroy's memoir ‘The Water Is Wide,’ the
story follows Conrack's effort to help these children even as he is met by
resistance from the school's principal, a middle aged black woman (Madge
Sinclair) who believes the children need to beaten with a leather strap, and
superintendent Skeffington (Hume Cronyn), a grinning sadist who likes to grab a
kid by the thumb and twist, a punishing move he calls "milking the
rat." Add to this a local drunk
(Paul Winfield) who skulks around the island like Boo Radley, the talkative Mr.
Quickfellow (Antonio Fargas) who stalks 13-year-old girls with promises of new
dresses, plus the natural reluctance of students who have never been
challenged, and it seems Conrack has entered a world that may be too much for
him to conquer.
Yet, armed with nothing but his enthusiasm, Conrack
gradually earns the love and respect of the classroom. The kids, as meek as
church mice at the movie’s start, are
soon chanting James Brown songs, and dressed up for a Halloween trip to
Beaufort. Conrack's teaching methods are
unorthodox - he tickles, wrestles, and teases the students, and when he learns
that no one on the island knows how to swim, he promptly throws the kids, one
by one, into the river. His freewheeling style gets results. He even gets the
class to sit still long enough to listen to some recordings of classical
music. I like how the kids calmly pay
attention to the sounds coming from the old turntable. In a more contemporary movie, they all would
have picked up instruments, mastered them overnight, and would have then gone on to win a contest
of some kind, for in modern America a story is only uplifting if you can crush
someone and win a prize. But in Conrack,
the kids merely listen; they’re quietly mystified by the music, happy that they
can come close to pronouncing the names of Beethoven or Brahms. Conrack even
picks up one of the younger boys and cradles him as the music plays, inviting
him to close his eyes and sleep. Somehow, Conrack's good intentions get him labeled as "an outside
agitator" and fired from his job. Conrack tries to fight the verdict but
is no match for Skeffington’s power as superintendent. His good spirit bloodied
but unbowed, Conrack leaves the island. To the children he says, "May the
river be kind to you when you cross it."
As one might have expected, reactions to the movie were
mixed: syndicated columnist David Sterritt dismissed it as "an audacious
attempt at mythmaking." Indeed
there are scenes of Conrack jogging along the beach, his class running along
behind him, as if he’s some sort of golden haired pied piper, an image that probably
ruffled some feathers in the super cynical ‘70s. The New York Times gave it a
mostly positive review, but lamented the film's "glaze of sentimentality
that sugars much of the narrative."
Continue reading "REVIEW: "CONRACK" (1974) STARRING JON VOIGHT, TWILIGHT TIME BLU-RAY REVIEW "