Macon County Line

In Georgia in the mid-fifties, two brothers are spending their last weeks on the road before going into the army. When their car breaks down they have to wait in a small town and draw the attention of the local sheriff. At the same time, outside the town, two other men break into a house and kill the sheriff's wife. When the sheriff comes home and sees what is there, he believes one thing only: those two brothers did it. The whole weight of the film comes from that mistaken belief: the audience knows who the killers are, the sheriff does not, and nobody can tell him. The narrative moves not like a revenge story but like a demonstration of how a catastrophe becomes unavoidable. On release it was claimed that the film was based on a real event; the claim was never substantiated and is treated as a promotional device. The low-budget production became an unexpected box-office success.