May 24, 2020 – Cross Creek (1983) Amazon Prime Rental
Cross Creek is a sweet story about how a writer in the 1930s, played by Mary Steenburgen, abandons her husband and life in New York and moves to a remote part of Florida to write her novel. The writer learns to be independent, develops friendships with her neighbors, balances her autonomy with a romantic relationship, and ultimately learns to write from her own experience, rather than to emulate the gothic novels she loves. Since this is a true story about the writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, I don’t think it is a spoiler to report that in the end, she writes the novel The Yearling.
I read The Yearling in Junior High. It was the year that all the books they assigned in English class were about animals: the two I remember besides The Yearling are Old Yeller and Call of the Wild. I guess they figured that all kids like animals and so would like books about animals. They figured wrong about me. I found The Yearling and the other animal books to be completely uninteresting. At that point in my life, I only wanted to read science fiction.
Cross Creek would have been boring to me then too. It is a family picture, without stakes beyond the emotional development of the characters. It could have been a saccharine Hallmark movie if it weren’t for the direction of Martin Ritt and the great performance from Mary Steenburgen. For the most part, the movie avoids sentimentality and presents a gently compelling story. The exception is the overwrought score. No music from this movie is ending up on my Shelter-In-Place Streaming Playlist.
One other nice thing about Cross Creek is the reunion of Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell, who has a small part as the editor Max Perkins. The two actors were in one of my favorite unsung movies, Time After Time, a 1979 thriller/romance where H.G. Wells chases Jack the Ripper through time to what was then current-day San Francisco. I am due for a rewatch of this movie, so look for a review of Time After Time on this blog coming soon.
Cross Creek is the third Martin Ritt film I have watched since the pandemic began. The first two were Paris Blues and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is not the last Ritt Film I will watch – we are going to see Norma Rae as soon as we can get Henry to sit down with us long enough to watch. What is surprising is how different all these Martin Ritt films are from one another: a tense, black and white spy drama, a genial story of American Jazz musicians in Paris, and this sweet family drama.