Ruby Gentry

Ruby is the daughter of a poor family on the swampy coast of North Carolina. The well-off circle in the town never counts her as one of its own. The man she loves, Boake Tackman, returns her feeling but chooses to marry money. Out of anger Ruby marries Jim Gentry, the rich man of the town. After her husband's death she starts using the power in her hands to squeeze that circle one by one. King Vidor's film buries the question of class inside a love story, and that is its real subject; Ruby's exclusion is told through sex but its cause is money. Jennifer Jones has the lead and Charlton Heston plays Boake. Eighty-two minutes with no slack in them. The story returns to the swamp at the end and closes there. The film caused a moral argument in the year it was shown; today it is counted among Vidor's harshest works.