Stars in My Crown

A small town in Tennessee after the Civil War. Josiah Gray is the new preacher; he delivers his first sermon in the saloon with his gun on the table. Years pass. The film tells his life in the town in episodes: a typhoid outbreak, a disagreement with the young doctor, a summer seen through the eyes of children, and the men who want the land of Uncle Famous, the town's black farmer. Jacques Tourneur directs. Joel McCrea plays Josiah. The narrator is the boy who grows up in the preacher's house. Tourneur is known for his horror and noir; this is his calmest film and he described it as his own favourite. The central passage is an attempted lynching. The men of the town come to Uncle Famous's house in hoods and the preacher intervenes; the resolution comes not through a gun but through the reading of a will. The scene is among the early instances in American cinema of racist violence shown directly. The narrative is episodic and the plotting is weak; the film records a town and a period rather than telling a story. It was made for MGM and drew little attention commercially before being reappraised later. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Hollywood small town films and the cinema of Jacques Tourneur. Who it is not for: the narrative is scattered, the religious register is pronounced, and some passages are too optimistic from here.