Deeply moving Southern vignette. The script is artfully constructed for maximum dramatic impact. So many outstanding scenes, capped by a tour-de-force climax and a delightful reprise postscript, it's almost more than the emotions can stand.

Ford has a ball, often delineating his setting and characters with broad strokes, but all the more effective for the master's touch. A few slight lapses are made by two or three of the actors, but what does that matter compared to the picture's overall emotional impact? The Ford Stock Company is out in overwhelming parade force.

The movies also features "A"-budget sets and strikingly atmospheric black-and-white photography, plus a music score by the ever-reliable Victor Young (who uses Steven Foster most appealingly).

In all, a movie to treasure. I'd rate it 99%.

Ford said to me that this was his favorite movie of all the movies he had directed. Even though critics had exalted many others of his films to the skies, Ford thought "The Sun Shines Bright" was his greatest achievement. And I am really tempted to agree!

"The Sun Shines Bright" is an offensive portrait of the post-Civil War South and it's hard to imagine the film NOT offending anyone. Instead of showing real life in Kentucky, it's super-idealized to such a point that the film is ridiculous. The Confederate Civil War veterans get along just great with the Union vets (Kentucky was one of the few states that had folks fighting on both sides),the blacks are all extremely happy and life is grand. No matter that all this just isn't true and that blacks were treated, often, as subhuman.

In the original film, "Judge Priest", Will Rogers played the Judge and his ever-present lazy, stupid black sidekick, Poindexter, was played by Stepin Fetchit. Rogers, however, had been killed long ago in a famous plane crash and here the character is played by Charles Winninger and Fetchit is back to play the same stupid and lazy guy-- something Fetchit did in many films back in the day when laughing at a stupid and lazy black man was considered the rage. But his subhuman characterization is more sad than anything else...and I cannot imagine folks today thinking it's funny.

As for the stories in the film, they are all mildly interesting and they are engaging. You can tell it's a John Ford film even without a decent budget and fancy cast because it is highly sentimental. It also paints a portrait of what life SHOULD have been like--with the paternalistic white man looking out for their good little black children. It's odd, however, that the same racist director then went on to make "Sergeant Rutlidge" with Woody Strode--a film far ahead of its time and extremely sensitive to the dehumanization of black Americans.

So would I recommend this film? Not really. It's certainly among the director's lesser movies and is so inaccurate a portrayal that the retired history teacher within me felt a bit sad as I watched. Not horrible...just not what life was ever like in Kentucky...ever.

That is the theme of this sentimental comedy/drama remake of John Ford's "Judge Priest" which he also directed, and which he also asked black comical character actor Stepin Fetchit to repeat his role of the slow-witted servant. Not much has changed in almost two decades, and in the case of Hollywood's treatment of black characters, this is on the same scale as "Gone With the Wind". Cheerful mammys, singing darkies, almost missing the days of slavery, and in the case of Stepin Fetchit, he actually sits in on one of the meetings of the aging confederate soldiers as their servant, not their equal. At the heart and soul of this flawed but entertaining film is Charles Winninger, taking on the role which Will Rogers had played years before. He's running for re-election and finds opposition for the first time in years against a ruthless opponent.

This is a small-minded community with Jane Darwell as the town matriarch who greets each of the young ladies coming into a town dance with the same fake compliment of her being the bell of the ball. When an outcast from years before returns, the past of her illegitimate daughter (Arlene Judge) is threatened to be revealed, and this leads to Judge Priest standing up for decency over human judgments and the moral pointing of the finger. Yet, there are tons of stereotypical southern characters tossed into the mixture, especially the presence of two moonshine making hicks (one played by a young Slim Pickens),a typical "Negro spiritual", and a ton of dialog rolling off the tongues of holier than thou sweeter yet as dangerous as honey rolling off a hive filled with swarming bees. The return to the screen after a 20 year absence of Dorothy Jordan (as Judge's unfortunate dying mother) is of particular interest as even with little dialog, she breaks your heart just with her sadly pathetic presence.

In spite of the bell of falsehoods this film rings, I can't dismiss it as a film I didn't enjoy, because it showed that even in one small way through Winninger's character, people were changing somewhat, even if the whole racist stereotypes and praising of a way of life that just could not continue to be grated somewhat on my nerves.