Summary
Blood-soaked hollers echo where two clans have turned Appalachia into a private theatre of retribution: the Tollivers, moonshine-dripping feudal lords, and the Falins, their mirror in rage. Onto this scarred stage strides Jack Hale, urbane engineer with a theodolite instead of a rifle, sniffing out the black gold that sleeps beneath Tolliver clay. His surveying compass soon spins toward June, wildflower daughter of patriarch Judd, whose gaze holds both thunderclouds and dawn. Cousin Dave, feral for possession, marks the outsider as prey. What begins as childish flirtation in June ripens into seismic hunger once Dave’s machinations reveal the abyss between mountain innocence and the world’s corruptions. Jack bankrolls her exile to Manhattan parlors, hoping textbooks will launder mountain grit into cosmopolitan glow; meanwhile he accepts the sheriff’s star, outlawing the very stills that fund June’s transformation. Coal seams crumble, investors flee, and Jack’s last coin ships north to keep his beloved cloistered in civilization. When Dave’s gun spits death into Jack’s confederate Bob, Judd’s name is nailed to the crime; June returns a porcelain sophisticate, only to see her father shackled by the man she once kissed beneath blooming catalpa. Mountain law erupts: Tolliver rifles answer Falin rifles, white flags flutter like dove wings, and a death-bed confession exiles Dave from clan and conscience. The old man’s final wheeze commands June toward the engineer who toppled their world. Dave, now dynamite-wrapped revenant, stalks back to erase every memory of home; Jack’s desperate toss of a sizzling powder keg turns assassin to vapor. Amid embers and settling ash, Uncle Billy’s cracked voice binds the survivors in matrimony beneath the titular pine, whose lone silhouette has watched, indifferent, since the first drop of Tolliver blood met Falin.
Synopsis
A feud between the Tollivers and Falins has existed for many years. Jack Hale, a New York Mining Engineer, comes into the country and searches for coal lands. He hears of coal on the Tolliver land and, after investigating, begins large operations, during which he falls in love with June, daughter of Judd Tolliver. Dave Tolliver, nephew of Judd, has long loved June and becomes frantically jealous of Jack. June first loves Jack with childish simplicity, but through the duplicity of her cousin Dave, she learns her love for Jack is more than childish fancy. Jack wants her sent to school and with the consent of Judd furnishes funds for her education. Judd and Dave Tolliver are moonshiners, whose unlawful business is discovered by Jack, who has been appointed sheriff, and after a desperate attempt by Dave and his friend Red Fox to kidnap June, Jack decides to send June to New York to finish her education. The coal interests prove bad; failure stares Jack in the face. Dave in a feud fight with the Falins, kills Bob, a friend of Jack's, with Judd's gun. Old Judd is accused and arrested. Jack sends his last dollar to June and she returns to her old home, a beautiful society girl, but when she learns Jack has had her father arrested, she turns on him. She seeks the Tollivers and demands a rescue of her father, in which a terrific fight between the Tollivers and Falins takes place. Judd is seriously wounded and the Tollivers put out the white flag and are notified they must leave the country in forty-eight hours, which they do, carrying the wounded Judd with them. After many miles of travel Old Judd dies, but in his last breath denounced Dave and tells June to go back to Jack. After Judd's death she cannot give up her first love for Jack and at last gives up Dave and goes back to her old home. Dave follows and in an attempt to destroy June's old home with dynamite, he is foiled by Jack, who grabs the ignited can of powder and accidentally throws it into the dynamite cabin, which is blown to atoms, killing the wicked Dave, who has been spying from the cabin's interior. June and Jack are happily married by the Old Justice, their trusted friend, Uncle Billy, at the foot of "The Lonesome Pine."
Review Excerpt
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Seldom does a film from cinema’s infancy feel less like embalmed artifact and more like windburn on raw skin. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine—shot in 1916, splashed with hand-tinted firelight, and marinated in the sour mash of Appalachian legend—throbs with a startling, almost predatory immediacy. Director Frank L. Dear and adapter Eugene Walter distill John Fox Jr.’s brisk novel into a parable of capital colliding with clan, of education weaponized as both liberation and betrayal. The result i..."
