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6.6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Cabin in the Cotton remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Is The Cabin in the Cotton worth your time tonight? Yes, but only if you have a soft spot for dusty, fast-moving 1932 dramas that don't quite know what they want to be. 🍿
If you want a serious, politically deep film about Southern farmers, you will probably hate this. But if you want to see Bette Davis act like a chaotic cat in a sunbeam, you're in the right place.
Richard Barthelmess plays Marvin, a tenant farmer's son who gets a job working for the rich landowner. He has this permanent squint, like he's trying to read a very small menu in a dark room.
He's supposed to be torn between his loyalties to his poor neighbors and his fancy new boss. But honestly, he just looks tired and deeply stressed.
Then we get Bette Davis. She isn't even the main character, but she completely hijacks the movie.
She plays Madge, the owner's daughter, and she is just so delightfully bad at pretending to be a sweet Southern belle. Her accent is all over the place, like she's swapping states mid-sentence.
This is the movie with her famous line: "I'd love to kiss ya, but I jes' washed my hair." It comes out of nowhere and it is brilliant. 🧼
The romance in this feels incredibly rushed, almost like they forgot they needed a love triangle. It reminded me a bit of the chaotic relationship pacing in The Whirlwind of Youth, where everyone just falls in love because the script says so.
Their is a scene where Marvin and Madge are by the river, and the crickets in the background are so loud they sound like a broken refrigerator. I couldn't focus on what they were saying at all.
And the poor tenant farmers are portrayed with zero nuance. They basically just stand around in overalls looking sad or angry.
One old guy has a beard so fake it looks like it might slide off his chin if he talks too fast. I kept staring at his jawline waiting for the glue to give up.
The movie gets really preachy near the end. Marvin suddenly turns into a financial genius and starts reading from a giant ledger to solve a town dispute.
It's basically a 1930s Excel spreadsheet presentation. It is about as exciting as it sounds.
Still, there's something very charming about how clunky it is. It doesn't have the polished, boring feel of later Hollywood movies.
It's messy, it's short, and it has Bette Davis behaving badly. That's more than enough for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
IMDb —
1916
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