Why you should watch Henry Fonda wear oversized hats in 1936

If you want to see what the world looked like when Hollywood first took color cameras out into the real woods, this is 100% worth your time. Film nerds will love the weird, painted-looking trees, but anyone looking for a fast-paced thriller will probably get bored out of their mind.

It is basically a story about hillbillies shooting at each other over some old grudge.

Fred MacMurray plays a city slicker who arrives to build a railroad. He wears some very clean pants that look way too modern for the Kentucky hills.

Then you have Sylvia Sidney as June, the local girl who wants to learn how to read.

She is great, but the real reason to watch this is a super young Henry Fonda. He plays Dave, her cousin who is extremely angry about everything and wears a hat that looks slightly too big for his head.

Fonda has this raw, twitchy energy here. You can tell he is going to be a massive star, even when he is just standing around looking grumpy in the brush.

The movie is famous for being the first three-strip Technicolor film shot on location.

Honestly, the colors are the best part. The blues of the sky and the greens of the pine trees look almost too vibrant, like a postcard that got left in the sun.

It does not look realistic at all. But it looks gorgeous in a weird, dreamlike way.

Some of the scenes feel like they were staged just to show off the technology. Like, there is a shot of a yellow bird that feels like the director is screaming, 'Look! It is yellow! We can do that now!'

It reminds me of how movies back then were always trying out new gimmicks, like the bizarre genre-bending in The Monster and the Girl. Hollywood was just throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck.

The plot itself gets pretty silly.

The Tolliver family and the Falin family have been feuding for generations. Nobody really remembers why, which I guess is the point, but it makes the characters seem a bit thick.

There is a kid in this movie played by Spanky McFarland. Yes, the kid from Our Gang.

He plays a character named 'Bud' and his fate is surprisingly dark for a movie that starts out feeling like a cozy comedy.

I did not expect this movie to punch me in the gut like that.

The ending gets incredibly melodramatic.

People start dying and there are a lot of speeches about progress and peace.

Fred MacMurray mostly just stands there looking tall and concerned. He is fine, but he lacks the weird, dangerous spark that Fonda has.

There is one scene where a cabin gets blown up and the explosion looks incredibly fake. Like, you can see the cardboard pieces flying.

It made me laugh out loud. 🌲

But then the movie immediately tries to make you cry. The tone is all over the place.

Still, I kind of loved it.

It has this charm that you just do not get anymore.

If you can overlook some outdated stereotypes and some very slow dialogue scenes, give it a watch on a rainy Sunday.