Families or households could be either happy or dysfunctional, in William Wyler, they always found the right painter to their complex relationships especially with war or conflicts as emotional canvases. Either like peas in a pod or not amounting to a hill of beans, Wyler always knew how to draw individuals as family members, generally getting the best out of actors.
But even by Wyler's standards, there's something too conventional in that bucolic portrayal of a Quaker homesteader's family: the Birdwells, starring Gary Cooper as the reassuring patriarch, Dorothy McGuire the straight-laced holier-than-thou mother who bans as much fun as possible it's a wonder she got such goofy kids: Little Jess with his love-and-hate relationship with a pet-goose, Phyllis Love as Mattie enamored with one of the neighbors' son and Anthony Perkins as the awkward-mannered son. What we've got in the beginning is literally "Little Quaker House in the Prairie".
The first act establishes the major conflict between the Quakers' pacifist philosophy and the ongoing Civil war threatening their peaceful life and calling for every man, old or young, to defend their properties, their lives. Watching Gary Cooper playing a Quaker naturally takes us back to "High Noon" where his bride played by Grace Kelly refused to see him confront Frank Miller, the score from Dimitri Tiomkin and the Oscar-nominated song makes the parallel even more inevitable. But there's a reason why "High Noon" is a classic and why "Friendly Persuasions is only an acceptable finished product made in Hollywood.
The major conflict set-up during a powerful church sequence is cancelled out by the sense of unshakable sitcom-like unity within the Birdwells' family and diluted in many debatable episodic moments involving the buying of an organ or a horse. I understand it's supposed to show that the Birdwells aren't equally zealous, that Jess has a knack for sport and music but by the time the action really picks up, we're only a twenty minutes away from the ending and the climax didn't leave up to the expectations the tag-line inspired. I read Wyler didn't know whether Cooper should have used a gun or not and that hesitation shows up. Even Cooper was displeased with his character believing it didn't fit his reputation.
It's like the real dilemma wasn't much between God's precepts and the war but how to handle actors' images for the sake of the film' publicity. So it's no wonder the film failed to deliver a definite answer to its issue if the director was more cautious about the public's response. Wyler is one of the best of his generation but I have a feeling the film might have been different if it was directed by Elia Kazan. It's a real shame because you can see how Anthony Perkins (the only Oscar-nominated cast-member, which is saying a lot for a Wyler picture) is too tortured deep inside, to be drowned in the middle of anecdotal sequences. Perkins made such a sensation that he was branded the new 'James Dean' and I could see why, his shy and awkward manners, his lanky demeanor and his expressive eyes made the film.
But there's so few of him the film leaves you hungry for something that never happens. It's all starters but no main course. Maybe I expected a little more from a film that won the Golden Palm, something more provocative, more thought-provoking, Wyler just plays it on the safe side and leaves it warm. Even Phyllis Love as the girl in love made me expect some twist in her romantic subplot but the camera was unnecessarily enamored with Cooper and McGuire who bored the hell out of me as the eternal killjoy.
So granted the film has its outdated charm, its postcard look of Indiana Valley, the cute rivalries between neighbors, the moments where you could see Quakers becoming outcasts from the rest of the fighting men, I wish Perkins could become a sort of outcast too, a black sheep or someone who'd confront Cooper like Dean confronted his fathers in "Rebel Without a Cause" or "East of Eden". It could have been more daring but it was too clean, too civilized, too anticlimactic. It's exactly as if the Bridge on the River Kwai didn't explode, that's how I felt.
I don't think I have ever been disappointed by a William Wyler movie, even his most conventional works carried interesting depths beneath their well-directed, well-photographed and Hollywood-correct look. But "Friendly Persuasion" suffers from an uneven pacing and no specific direction, made by a William Wyler whose pair of Best Picture winners put him in a zone of commercial comfort, this film doesn't standout as one of his best, it's not even one of his memorable lesser movies.
I'm glad Wyler could pull himself together and make his final masterpiece: "Ben-Hur" three years later, and Perkins would get a role that would fit his acting talent in "Psycho". So the best achievement of "Friendly Persuasion" is that at least it persuaded Hollywood that Perkins was a talent on which to invest.
But even by Wyler's standards, there's something too conventional in that bucolic portrayal of a Quaker homesteader's family: the Birdwells, starring Gary Cooper as the reassuring patriarch, Dorothy McGuire the straight-laced holier-than-thou mother who bans as much fun as possible it's a wonder she got such goofy kids: Little Jess with his love-and-hate relationship with a pet-goose, Phyllis Love as Mattie enamored with one of the neighbors' son and Anthony Perkins as the awkward-mannered son. What we've got in the beginning is literally "Little Quaker House in the Prairie".
The first act establishes the major conflict between the Quakers' pacifist philosophy and the ongoing Civil war threatening their peaceful life and calling for every man, old or young, to defend their properties, their lives. Watching Gary Cooper playing a Quaker naturally takes us back to "High Noon" where his bride played by Grace Kelly refused to see him confront Frank Miller, the score from Dimitri Tiomkin and the Oscar-nominated song makes the parallel even more inevitable. But there's a reason why "High Noon" is a classic and why "Friendly Persuasions is only an acceptable finished product made in Hollywood.
The major conflict set-up during a powerful church sequence is cancelled out by the sense of unshakable sitcom-like unity within the Birdwells' family and diluted in many debatable episodic moments involving the buying of an organ or a horse. I understand it's supposed to show that the Birdwells aren't equally zealous, that Jess has a knack for sport and music but by the time the action really picks up, we're only a twenty minutes away from the ending and the climax didn't leave up to the expectations the tag-line inspired. I read Wyler didn't know whether Cooper should have used a gun or not and that hesitation shows up. Even Cooper was displeased with his character believing it didn't fit his reputation.
It's like the real dilemma wasn't much between God's precepts and the war but how to handle actors' images for the sake of the film' publicity. So it's no wonder the film failed to deliver a definite answer to its issue if the director was more cautious about the public's response. Wyler is one of the best of his generation but I have a feeling the film might have been different if it was directed by Elia Kazan. It's a real shame because you can see how Anthony Perkins (the only Oscar-nominated cast-member, which is saying a lot for a Wyler picture) is too tortured deep inside, to be drowned in the middle of anecdotal sequences. Perkins made such a sensation that he was branded the new 'James Dean' and I could see why, his shy and awkward manners, his lanky demeanor and his expressive eyes made the film.
But there's so few of him the film leaves you hungry for something that never happens. It's all starters but no main course. Maybe I expected a little more from a film that won the Golden Palm, something more provocative, more thought-provoking, Wyler just plays it on the safe side and leaves it warm. Even Phyllis Love as the girl in love made me expect some twist in her romantic subplot but the camera was unnecessarily enamored with Cooper and McGuire who bored the hell out of me as the eternal killjoy.
So granted the film has its outdated charm, its postcard look of Indiana Valley, the cute rivalries between neighbors, the moments where you could see Quakers becoming outcasts from the rest of the fighting men, I wish Perkins could become a sort of outcast too, a black sheep or someone who'd confront Cooper like Dean confronted his fathers in "Rebel Without a Cause" or "East of Eden". It could have been more daring but it was too clean, too civilized, too anticlimactic. It's exactly as if the Bridge on the River Kwai didn't explode, that's how I felt.
I don't think I have ever been disappointed by a William Wyler movie, even his most conventional works carried interesting depths beneath their well-directed, well-photographed and Hollywood-correct look. But "Friendly Persuasion" suffers from an uneven pacing and no specific direction, made by a William Wyler whose pair of Best Picture winners put him in a zone of commercial comfort, this film doesn't standout as one of his best, it's not even one of his memorable lesser movies.
I'm glad Wyler could pull himself together and make his final masterpiece: "Ben-Hur" three years later, and Perkins would get a role that would fit his acting talent in "Psycho". So the best achievement of "Friendly Persuasion" is that at least it persuaded Hollywood that Perkins was a talent on which to invest.