Summary
A rust-streaked reel of Americana unspools across the taciturn New England dusk: Lem Holbrook, prodigal son of granite-jawed Eph, filches a fistful of savings to bankroll the perfumed illusions of Rose, a girl whose laughter smells of cheap lilac and borrowed time. Reuben Whitcomb—broad-shouldered, honest as a hymn—absorbs the blame like a biblical scapegoat, shackled inside a clapboard jail where shadows wear the iron taste of injustice. Behind bars he befriends Happy Jack, a grinning drifter whose pockets jingle with tall tales; together they bolt into the bruised night, leaving Uncle Josh—Reuben’s weather-worn guardian—to sign away the ancestral furrows in a trembling mortgage. Rumor, that swift-winged scavenger, whispers to Ann—Reuben’s betrothed—that her man now chases Rose across oceans; yet Happy Jack’s postcard from the Orient corrects the lie: Reuben has shipped out to Shanghai, chasing wages beneath dragon-red skies. As compound interest gnaws at Josh’s last bushel of hope, Happy Jack scours foreign docks while back home the mortgage tightens like a noose. On the eve of foreclosure, a cyclone—part Old-Testament wrath, part cosmic exorcist—obliterates storefronts, steeples, and lies, leaving only Josh’s wheat-stalks upright in the dawn. Stunned by the apocalyptic acquittal, Lem drops to his knees, confessing the theft. Reuben’s freighter docks; he strides through the splintered town, sunburned, sea-changed, and ready to forgive. The final tableau frames three generations on a sagging porch, reconciliation humming louder than the cicadas.
Synopsis
When Lem Holbrook steals some money from his father, Eph Holbrook, to give to Rose, Reuben Whitcomb is accused and jailed. There he meets Happy Jack, and they escape; but Reuben's father, Uncle Josh, is forced to mortgage his farm to Eph to cover the loss. Reuben's sweetheart, Ann, is disturbed by reports that he has gone to meet Rose, but Uncle Josh hears from Happy Jack that he has actually gone to China. Happy Jack goes to search for Reuben while Uncle Josh finds it harder and harder to meet his payments. Just as he is about to sell out, a violent storm levels all of the town except Uncle Josh's farm, prompting Lem to confess to the robbery. Reuben returns, and all are reconciled.
Review Excerpt
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Imagine a film that smells of damp sawdust and kerosene, its intertitles flickering like the last lantern in a bankrupt barn. The Old Homestead—released in the same year Howard Carter cracked open Tutankhamun’s tomb—digs not into Egyptian gold but into the loam of American guilt, unearthing a morality play as cracked and fecund as drought-parched earth suddenly split by lightning.
Director William C. deMille (Cecil’s lesser-known, more humanistic brother) stages the crime in chiaroscuro: a lan..."
