Kentucky

1938
6.2| 1h36m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 30 December 1938 Released
Producted By: 20th Century Fox
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Info

Young lovers Jack and Sally are from families that compete to send horses to the 1938 Kentucky Derby, but during the Civil War, her family sided with the South while his sided with the North--and her Uncle Peter will have nothing to do with Jack's family.

Genre

Drama, Romance

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Director

David Butler

Production Companies

20th Century Fox

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Kentucky Audience Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.
Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
bkoganbing The Look Of Eagles is what every great race horse has according to Walter Brennan in Kentucky. It's that gleam in the eye that you see in any athlete, human or equine, that tells you he's got heart. In the case of horses, heart enough to go the distance of a mile and a quarter, the set distance of the Kentucky Derby.The third Oscar for Best Supporting Actor went to Walter Brennan for Kentucky as the 34 year old Brennan made up with white hair plays unreconstructed rebel Peter Goodwin, grand uncle to Loretta Young. This film set a standard for Brennan who played very little, but old codgers after that.The leads in Kentucky are Loretta Young and Richard Greene who was no doubt brought to 20th Century Fox as a backup for Tyrone Power. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the film was developed as something for Power originally who co-starred with Young on a few occasions.The two are three generations removed from the Civil War which split the families apart. In a prologue to the modern story, the head of the Dillon family sides with the Union and the head of the Goodwin clan goes with the Confederacy. Later on Douglass Dumbrill head of the Dillon family now an officer in the Union Army raids the Goodwin farm and the head of the Goodwin family is shot and killed and the thoroughbred horses they were raising are taken as war contraband. Young Bobs Watson sees all this and he grows up to be Walter Brennan.When Greene speeds by in a car and catches sight of Loretta Young on a horse, it's love at first sight, but a forbidden love because of the family feud. Greene and Young have a rocky road ahead, not helped by the fact that he gives up the banking business and goes to work for the Goodwins under an alias because she won't give him the right time of a day if she knows he's one of the hated enemy.The 1938 Kentucky Derby is worked into the plot where Calumnet Farms Lawrin ridden by Eddie Arcaro wins and Arcaro also gets a line in the film. Lawrin stands in for the three year old colt owned by one of the feuding families. But the win is also clouded by tragedy.A lot of black players get into Kentucky, but sad to say in some truly stereotypical roles. It's probably why Kentucky is rarely seen these days. I hadn't seen it myself in about 35 years.Still for Brennan's dominating performance and Loretta Young at her prettiest you can't go wrong with Kentucky.
edwagreen Terrific film dealing with the horse racing scene in Kentucky.We are taken from the beginning of the civil war, when generations of feuding between families begin when a Goodwin is killed by a Dillon during the taking of horses for the union army.The film then jumps to 1938 and the generations that followed these families. Naturally, Loretta Young and Richard Greene will become lovers and are from the different families with Greene hiding his Dillon name.Walter Brennan is absolutely magnificent here as the older Peter Dillon, who cried hysterically at the time of his father's murder in 1861. He plays a crusty, cantankerous individual with a rare knowledge of horse breeding and with it all, a wonderful human heart. His Academy Award as best supporting actor was extremely well deserved here.The blue grass of Kentucky was never more enjoyable in this sprawling film of great memories of a bygone era.
Michael The Yankee ransacking prelude more or less spells out the eventuality that years later Young is going to fall for Greene and that their respective families are going to trample the path of true love. Quite literally, as the updated story is now played out against a bluegrass background.Get yourself into Hollywood mode and dispense with the logistics of script and story, and instead enjoy everything else. The performances, even though they embody strictly cliché and (predictably racial) caricature, are still marvellous for those who love a Fox-style wallow - Brennan won that year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The film is generally well and pacily edited, and the racing sequences are particularly exciting.The real star of this show though, for me, was the sublime photography which I can honestly say offered the most richest and well-preserved example of pre-40s 3-strip Technicolor I have so far seen. Even after more than 50 years, its luminescence (at least in this Channel 4 print) was breathtakingly striking and full of lustre, with yellow in particular registering far more strongly than I have previously seen in a 30s Technicolor movie, and natural outdoor verdance looking as if it had been sprayed with kiwi fruit dye. No doubt deployed deliberately to enhance the otherwise routine nature of the story, it would still take a considerable kick of horsepower to elevate the film to the grandeur of, say, 'Gone With The Wind', to which it bears more than a passing dramatic resemblance.
capitan_movie Walter Brennan set a standard for supporting actors with this perfect equine movie. You actually believe that the 38-year-old Brennan is a wizened 68-year-old track veteran. Young Loretta is equally winning in her starring debut. This is the classic movie that all the cliches copied.