Love Comes Softly

Marty is nineteen and travelling west with her husband. He dies on the way. She is left alone, pregnant and without money; winter is coming and surviving on her own is not possible. A man called Clark makes a proposal: he needs someone to look after his daughter and she needs a roof. They will pass the winter together and in spring she can go back east. The arrangement is made in the form of a marriage, but neither counts it as one. The winter is long. Michael Landon Jr. directs. Katherine Heigl plays Marty and Dale Midkiff plays Clark; Corbin Bernsen is in the cast. The source is Janette Oke's novel. This novel of Oke's is counted as influential in the spread of Christian historical romance in America, and the series ran to many books. The film became the first link in a series; sequels were made for years afterwards. The matter it treats is what a relationship built out of necessity becomes over time; the film does not rush it. Its dimension of faith is plain and the characters' decisions rest on it. Winter and farm life are shown in detail and the period design is plain. Its limit is predictability; the outcome is clear from the start and the conflict is low. Another limit is scale; the production is at television scale and the camera work limited. Who it is for: viewers who like period romance grounded in faith and quiet family films. Who it is not for: it is predictable, slow, and has little dramatic tension.