As late-ish Allan Dwan films go, DRIFTWOOD is pretty good. The title sets up an expectation of the seashore, which is nowhere to be seen as we begin in a ghost town, all tumbleweed and H.B. Warner. Drunken sexy Jesus promptly expires, leaving his granddaughter, little Natalie Wood, alone in the world.
The whole piece has a strange atmosphere — the setting seems postapocalyptic. Warner dies with “Beelzebub” on his lips, and little Natalie adopts the word, applying it to anything threatening. Then she adopts a dog, whom she names Hollingsworth, after herself. (The dog MIGHT be Lassie, or anyway A Lassie.)
Wandering towards the nearest town with Hollingsworth, Natalie meets Dean Jagger, surprisingly human and natural and nice for once. Ruth Warrick is nice too, as is Charlotte Greenwood and even Margaret Hamilton and of course Walter Brennan. The film is stuffed full of nice people, with only Jerome Cowan, the mayor, and his spoiled failson, Teddy Infuhr, as nasties.
In a packed programme, we get a pandemic and panic, vaccination programme, miracle cure, and a literal sheepdog trial as Hollingsworth is put in the dock for a crime he didn’t commit (biting the mayoral failson, though why anyone would blame him if he HAD…)
NW has to carry more of this film than in any of her other child roles, I think, and she’s quite excellent. Maybe a little professional, but cute as a button and charismatic as hell.
The movie isn’t cinematically showy but you don’t look to Dwan for that. It has a nice bygone optimism: spotted fever puts the community in jeopardy but everyone pulls together and prays together and more or less everything works out OK. Maybe it could happen that way, then. Or maybe it was always a comforting lie. Hollywood Bokononism.
DRIFTWOOD stars Maria; Emily Monroe Norton Kane; Stumpy; Jesse Q. Grimm; Aunt Eller; Miles Archer; Jesus – the Christ; the Wicked Witch of the West; Mr. Manleigh; Phil Kelly / The Sphinx; Alfred the butler; Benjamin Kettle; Grandma Walton; Alfalfa; and Plenty O’Toole (scenes deleted).
shadowplay 