The Stranger's Return

With her marriage over in New York, Louise goes to the Midwest to recover, to the farm of a grandfather she has never met. The old man is difficult but takes to her; the relatives on the farm treat her as an outsider who has come for a share of the estate. Louise finds an attachment she did not expect to the land and to the life there. At the same time she grows close to the neighbouring farmer, who is married, and that is something capable of upsetting everything in the district. It belongs with the rural films King Vidor was making in the same years, with land, family and property all discussed at once. It was shot before the Hays rules were fully enforced, and it neither punishes nor rescues a divorced woman; it lets her make her own decision. Lionel Barrymore plays the grandfather, Miriam Hopkins the granddaughter and Franchot Tone the farmer. The source is Phil Stong's novel. It comes out less sentimental than most melodramas of the period.