Tomorrow a Black & White Classic with Robert Duvall – Review

Sometimes finding an excellent movie is like discovering gold.

I’ve been looking over the selections on the TUBI channel for weeks now. They have movies from the 30’s and others all the way up to Bridge of Spies. It’s a fairly wide range. Many films have a little more interest than the common re-runs of many other channels. For example they have numerous films out of Australia. Many of the films have closed captioning, which means I can watch the films in bed when my wife, Peg is sound asleep.

I stumbled upon “Tomorrow” in the late evening/early to bed on Christmas day. I had never heard of the film, but I certainly knew Robert Duvall, who played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. I saw that in 1963 as a senior at Clover Park High School. My favorite Duvall production was the Lonesome Dove mini-series in 1989.

Once my remote started the playback for Tomorrow, I was hooked. The first thing to catch my eye was that the film had been saved at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I thought, “What have I missed?” The film starts in a courthouse with Robert Duvall as a jurist and then the story fades to the Duvall character being taken to a sawmill.  

Official 1972 Trailer

YouTube – entire movie

Wikipedia Details:

Tomorrow is a 1972 American drama film directed by Joseph Anthony. The screenplay was written by Horton Foote, adapted from a play he wrote for Playhouse 90 that was based on a 1940 short story by William Faulkner in the short story collection Knight’s Gambit. The PG-rated film was filmed in the Mississippi counties of Alcorn and Itawamba. Although released in 1972, it saw limited runs in the U.S. until re-released about ten years later.

The opening courthouse scenes of Tomorrow were shot at the historic Jacinto Courthouse in Alcorn County, Mississippi. The courthouse, built in 1854, has been refurbished and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The majority of the film was shot in the Bounds Crossroads community of Itawamba County, at the sawmill on the farm of Chester Russell, the grandfather of singer Tammy Wynette (Virginia Wynette Pugh), who lived most of her young years there with her grandparents until she married in 1960. The sawmill building, where much of the film was shot, was built just for the film. Chester Russell played one of the jurors and can be seen when the jury is deliberating in the opening courthouse scenes. Some of the film props were also leased from James Franks Antique Museum of Tupelo, Mississippi. Lead Robert Duvall, the only known surviving actor from the film, has called Tomorrow one of his personal favorites.

Director – Joseph Anthony

Writers – William Faulkner (story), Horton Foote (screen writer)

Stars – Robert Duvall, Olga Bellin, and Sudie Bond

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer known for his novels and short stories about Mississippi. Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and in 1962 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Story Line

“A lonely farmer in backwoods Mississippi takes in a pregnant wayfarer who has been abandoned by the father of her child and the farmer looks after her.” — Guy Lazarus

An interesting detail from IMDB:

Robert Duvall based Jackson Fentry’s unusual accent on a man he met once while walking the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Duvall was so struck by the man’s deep-voiced accent, he never forgot it.

Jackson Fentry: “I dunno why we met when we did, or why I found you when you was all wore out. I couldn’t save you no matter how bad I wanted to. I dunno why you want me to raise this baby instead of your people. I dunno what they done to you to make you turn so on them. But I don’t care, I promised ya I’d raise him, and I will. Like he was my own.”

FEATURED IMDB USER REVIEW

Excellent movie: concise, spare, heart-wrenching for a parent or caregiver. Incredibly moving, well told tale. Robert Duvall takes the viewer into the vast depths of a man’s heart and tragically into the dark night of the soul. This Shakespearean-like Tragedy brings the viewer to cathartic release and lingers with the viewer long after the final credits. The precise acting, the black & white cinematography, the gut-wrenching emotions combine to give the right viewer an extraordinary film experience. The “right” viewer = Someone who has ever loved without reservation, a hero of the heart. For the wrong viewer: slow, maybe pointless and yes, maybe an inaccurate rendition of the original short story. However, what some may see as flaws, are carefully crafted intentions to dramatize/present on film difficult-to-describe, complex emotions and relationships.

I was in the “right” viewer category. If you think you are a “right” viewer, you’re in for an excellent experience. 

For more information from IMDB: imdb.com/title/tt0069393/