I WALK THE LINE (1970)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: John Frankenheimer

SCREENWRITER: Alvin Sargent

FILM STARS: Gregory Peck, Tuesday Weld, Estelle Parsons, Ralph Meeker, Lonny Chapman, Charles Durning

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Madison Jones

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Penguin

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1970

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1967

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: An Exile

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS: The book is a Greek tragedy, or a cautionary tale or perhaps just a moral fable on temptation and obsession.

It’s the story of a fall from grace of one man because of his obsession. He becomes “an exile” (the book’s original title) amongst his community, or, perhaps he was already an exile. The title works but so does the film title “I Walk the Line”.

The film follows the book’s narrative, if not its emotional and philosophical tone, fairly closely until the end where the story changes drastically which immediately puts the book and film in different philosophical camps.

Spoilers ahead.

The story of a middle-aged man’s exile from his former values (or maybe from his communities’ values) and so from himself. Sheriff Tawes, a small-town sheriff in the deep south, is a model of virtue and strict observer of the protocols of his office but he is middle aged, getting fat and bored in his marriage. What to do? He has an affair with the much younger and very forward girl, Alma McCain, the daughter of a local illegal moonshiner. Her sexual favours continue, he comes to fall in love, errr becomes obsessed, with her but things are not what they seem. As his passion escalates so does his need to protect his secret, protect her, and by extension protect her family. He begins steering police attention away from her father, causing him to lie to misuse his police power and lie to his own family and his fellow officers. As you would expect, things rapidly go out of control, and his attempts to fix things just make it all worse.

Tawes descent is understandable. Alma came along at just the right time. His marriage had been dying before she arrived. He was an emotional “exile” and floundering. In one scene, in which the sheriff takes his wife and child on an outing in a vain attempt at revivification, the narrator says: “The really dismal part was that he again had tricked himself, had arranged this stunt in the idle belief that he really intended to mend what he had broken”. His wife constantly berates him for his lack of ambition, and he seems to have just fallen into the job of Sherriff without any real conviction. It’s not made clear what brought him here though, apart from his daughter, who he has real affection for he has no other family. He seems lost and the loss may be a result of his loss of relationship with the land. There is a new order threatening his identity. There is a new chemical plant, hydroelectricity, old buildings are being torn down, trees are being cut down,  old people are being pushed aside, concrete and steel is replacing wood and grass. Many of the old landmarks in the county of his youth have been submerged by a lake. The valley of his youth has been destroyed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) who damned the creek which flooded his valley creating a lake. The Sheriff out with his wife, Hazel, and young daughter Sybil, shows his daughter the lake:

‘”You see all that water out there?”

Sybil glanced across the glittering lake.

“That wasn’t there when I was a boy – before they built the big dam. All that was just a big valley, with farms. And a creek, Big Sandy Creek. That’s where I used to fish. My home was just about a mile up the lake from here – that way.”

“Is it still there?” she said.

“The house? Oh, no. They tore it down before the water rose. I wish I had a picture of it to show you. It was a big old clapboard house with-“

“Don’t get your father started on that.” Hazel interrupted in a voice hard and dry with finality. It produced not only a hush but a feeling of severance, like a shoot cleanly snipped off by shears.’

There is a feeling of loss in the book which makes it, perhaps, easy to understand why Tawes Sheriff would throw everything away to take up with Alma, because there was nothing left to throw away.

Of course, being a novel of the south the relationship to the land and the agrarian tradition is only part of the story. Many of the characters seem to continually live in and act from the shadows (the moonshining McCains are particularly mysterious and unknowable up to the climax). Lies are put on top of lies and things unravel in unexpected ways.  And even though God is not evoked here there is the feeling that there is a Southern Christian fire and brimstone God looking down over the Sheriff Tawes and alternatively shaking his head in disappointment and laughing at his mistakes.

Author Madison Percy Jones (1925–2012) was a novelist born in Nashville, Tennessee. He published almost a dozen novels. I haven’t read anything else though it seems a religious puritanism drives his novels as he tells tales of a changing south, and the loss of traditional social values, with all the darkness (and dark humour) you would expect. It is perhaps not surprising that Flannery O’Connor admired his writing, or at least his early writing as she died in 1964. She praised his novel A Buried Land (1963) as a “fine novel” in a letter to his publisher. She also reportedly said Jones was “better than the folks all the shoutin’s about”. She could have come up with this story. Jones’ book is short and packs an emotional punch.

It was bound to be made into a film.

The film has a lot going for it. Gregory Peck is good (though perhaps 10 years too old for the role) at showing the upstanding man on a slide he is perhaps a bit too upstanding, and he lacks the passion that make you think he would fall in love with a girl 25 or more years his junior. What happened to the Gregory Peck of Duel in the Sun (1946)? Tuesday Weld is magnificent and gorgeous and would make any man up and leave his wife. She could play southern Lolita’s and wayward types in her sleep and here, Alma is a cousin to her Noreen in Wild in the Country (1961). Weld is always good, and though a biggish star at the time she could have or should have been a lot bigger. Estelle Parsons as the wife and Charles Durning as the deputy (in a role that could have been written for Waren Oates) are good. Ralph Meeker as the moonshiner is perfect. When isn’t Meeker good, especially when playing villainous type roles? The only problem he doesn’t have much of a role (though in the book the character is also more of a catalyst).

The always watchable direction of John Frankenheimer here is, errr yes watchable, but he has substituted moody for the thoughtful suspense he was known for … The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), Seconds (1966), and later French Connection II (1975), Black Sunday (1977), Ronin (1998). Perhaps he was in a mood (sic) as the earlier The Gypsy Moths (1969) was about middle-aged moodiness and starred Frankenheimer regular Burt Lancaster who could have slipped into this role here (though I think Peck is slightly more suited. Frankenheimer spend a bit of time establishing place and the footage (by cinematographer David M. Walsh) of locals is almost documentarian. Sombre tones abound and everyone is old and suspicious or curious as the camera passes them by. Filmed (in part) on location in Gainesboro, Tennessee and Center Hill Lake and Dam it’s quite striking.

Perhaps the movie is best known for its soundtrack written and sung by Johnny Cash. Much like Peck I’m not sure Johnny gets the passion at the heart of the story, but he does get the sound of the hills, valleys and “the south”. Cash re-recorded his famous 1956 song which gives the film its new title and wrote enough (actually more, as sone of the songs aren’t in the film) music for an album. One of the songs, “Flesh and Blood,” even became a number one country hit in 1971 (#54 pop). The album went to #9 US Country (#176 US pop).

The problem is the script. Peck subsequently said later something like “there was a good film left on the cutting room floor”. That may be the case but only that floor held scenes filmed from the book and including the original ending.

Screenwriter Alvis Sargent is no slacker (Paper Moon (1973), Julia (1977), Straight Time (1978), Ordinary People (1980)) but he isn’t the right person to write a noirish tale of the South ….and whoever thought to make the story family friendly really missed the point.

The novel may be quite contemporary, but it was quite out of step with whatever else was happening in the US in 1967 when the book was written. And I suspect, that’s the issue … a tale of adultery, middle age passion and moonshiners was not going to fly in the free love and drugs of 1970 when the film was made. The characters would have been to alien for mainstream audiences, especially in the cities. We need them relatable …..

The book is more a book of characters who are extreme whereas just about everyone in the film is relatable and perhaps sympathetic.  In the book unlike the film, Tawes wife is nagging and unsympathetic (in the film she sticks by her man almost – she is almost apologetic even though he is cheating on her. She suggests that men his age sometimes seek out younger women, or they need something different. They respect him), the moonshiner is more evil (he prostitutes his daughter, kills people), Alma is more wanton and lacks morals, her husband is a grub (in the film he is named but doesn’t appear), and the federal policeman is more serious (he is almost comedy relief in the film). Only Tawes deputy is less sympathetic in the film (the filmmakers have him shooting dogs and attempting to rape Alma), but they must do that to justify what happens to him (even his wife is a nag in the film, where she isn’t in the book). It makes it easier to get rid of him and not care about what his wife goes through.

A nice touch in the film is the lake that flooded the valley of his youth, which almost becomes a character. Tawes disposes of a body in the lake (in the book he buries the body). the moonshiner has a cabin to make moonshine on its banks the lake is used to transport liquor to its destination.

But the big problem is the character of Tawes in the film. He is made much more sympathetic in the film. That’s t to say we don’t sympathize with him in the book, he is decent, understands the past (there is a wonderful passage about an old tree being knocked down for progress and an old man who resists) but he isn’t given an out. In the film he has deep and meaningful conversations with Alma, his wife (she doesn’t leave in the film) and his elderly and lonely father (quite poignant though the father character wasn’t in the book) and otherwise seems to be looking for people to understand him.

When the Sherriff’s world finally comes crashing down in the book it hits with a bang. And you know how it is going to end … in death, alone.

In the film he lives. He confronts Alma, who may or may not love him, and her moonshiner father who plays fair. He is wounded, left alone in the country but no one has seen this incident, , no one (other than the escaping moonshiner family) know of his bad deeds, his wife and daughter are still back at home.

He could return to town and pick up where he left off before he met Alma with only the lingering question of was it all worth it.

The book is great, the film despite its deviation from the book is good in its The Blue Angel (1930) meets Thunder Road (1958) story. Of course the music is great.

LINKS

TRAILER

The re-recorded title song: I Walk the Line (1970)

The single: Flesh and Blood (1970)

The main title credits: