Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

spotted-owl "Ruby Gentry" (1952) is an intense melodrama about a love-hate relationship, obsessive love, social class injustice, and revenge. Ruby (Jennifer Jones) is a sultry young woman who lives near a swamp in the small town of Braddock, North Carolina. She has black hair and a porcelain complexion. Her hourglass figure looks great in jeans and shirt. Most of the men in town desire her.Ruby is rejected by the townspeople because she is poor and from the wrong side of the tracks. She also intimidates people with her beauty, wild spirit and strong will. The tempestuous beauty is a hellcat one minute, and sweet the next. She endures many put-downs from the snobby townspeople. As the film progresses, Ruby changes from a wild-spirited but basically good person into a cold, powerful woman who takes vindictive revenge on the town.Ruby is obsessed with Boake Tackman (Charlton Heston), a handsome rogue from a local aristocratic family that became impoverished. They have a love-hate relationship, with a lot of passion and fighting. In one scene, Ruby the hellcat scratches Boake's face, but he doesn't seem to mind. However, Boake is driven by his ambition to restore his family's fortune by turning his land into a productive farm. He marries a local socialite, and then suggests that Ruby become his mistress. Ruby is insulted and angry.Jim Gentry (Karl Malden), a local rich man, pursues Ruby, and she marries him. Now she is "Ruby Gentry." ("Gentry" means upper class. A ruby is a gemstone symbolizing love and passion.) Jim is a kind and decent person, and Ruby truly loves him. However, at a party, Ruby's obsession with Boake leads her into a romantic encounter with him. (In this scene, she is wearing a beautiful chiffon ball gown, in the symbolic color of black.) Jim is at first outraged, but he loves Ruby so much that he forgives her completely.Jim tragically dies in a boat accident, and the angry townspeople falsely accuse Ruby of murdering him for his money. The nonstop noise of car horns blaring is nerve-wracking. Ruby is frightened by the torment of the townspeople.Ruby is now a rich, powerful woman, wearing elegant black dresses, hats and sunglasses. She takes revenge by foreclosing on numerous local companies, leaving behind many ruined businesses.However, Ruby still obsessively loves Boake, and offers to cancel his loan. Boake scorns Ruby, and she retaliates by flooding his farm with swamp water. Boake sadly watches as his small crops die in the flooded land. Ruby has coldly destroyed his dream.There is a creepy scene which strongly implies that Boake essentially rapes Ruby. Boake is angry, dangerous and anguished over his destroyed farm.The last part of the film takes place in the hellish swamp, where Ruby and Boake are chased by a madman through the muddy water. They eventually reconcile in a bittersweet scene.The ending is sad and moody. Ruby regrets her vindictive actions and seeks atonement. She becomes the captain of a small fishing boat, and lives as a recluse. Ruby looks like a thin man, wearing a man's uniform. She has lost her alluring glamor. The most beautiful woman in town is now an androgynous recluse.The sets and costumes are lavish. Jim Gentry's mansion contrasts with the wooden cabins in the swamp area. The swamp is eerie, filled with mist, twisted dark branches, and muddy water. The acting is excellent. Jennifer Jones looks beautiful in all of her outfits, including jeans, a white satin gown, a black chiffon ball gown, and a black dress with a black hat.This movie has interesting themes of obsessive love, ambition, a strange love-hate relationship, social class prejudice, revenge, women and power. I highly recommend this film.

iblinders I saw this when I was very young and it was quite risqué for 1952. Jennifer was beautiful and very seductive. The thought of a woman being shown on the screen engaged in seduction was far from the norm for my family. I went with my friend and was afraid to tell my Mother. I need to rent this and see if it still holds up after all this time. I'm sure Jennifer will as she was a wonderful actress. I love Charlton Heston because is a journeyman actor but he bugs me. He always seems to be the same person. Karl Malden is an actors actor and never gives a bad performance. The setting was typical of that time, poor girl seduces rich boy. The other one was rich girl falls for poor boy. Sure never happened in my life. What I remember most though was the music as It is so plaintive.. I have it downloaded and it is one of my favorites.

princehal King Vidor's head-on approach to melodrama seems to be out of fashion these days when critics are more comfortable with the self-conscious ironies of Douglas Sirk. Ruby Gentry is the last and, along with Stella Dallas, the best of his "women's pictures", a taut, almost abstract depiction of a woman's ultimately self-destructive attempt to live without restraints. The object of all men's desire, she tries to turn the tables on Charlton Heston by becoming the aggressor (in their first scene together shining her flashlight on him while she remains invisible, making him the passive object of her teasing erotic gaze). Caught between the fire-and-brimstone brother out of Flannery O'Connor and the discreet condemnation of the bourgeoisie she marries into, Ruby lashes out, taking them all (even Heston) down with her and ends up cast adrift on the sea, as inscrutable as Dreyer's Gertrud.

bkoganbing This hormone driven drama should have provided fodder for a good prime time soap opera the way Joan Crawford's Flamingo Road was later turned into one for television. The characters and plot line are right up there with Dallas and Falcon Crest.Jennifer Jones is driving all the men crazy here. First we have Charlton Heston who's the scion of the town's leading family. Good bloodlines, but a cash flow problem. He just wants a roll in the hay with her bad, but marry her and soil the family name, heaven forfend. Then we have Karl Malden, the town's richest man who stayed faithful to and invalid wife, but who also lusts for Jennifer and then marries her before the wife's body is cold. And we can't forget the Yankee doctor who comes to this North Carolina town and takes one look at Jennifer Jones in a tight blouse and he's hooked. Bernard Phillips who plays the doctor is the narrator and it's his eyes from which we see the action unfold. And we can't forget Jennifer's brother James Anderson, a wild religious fanatic who is constantly warning her about the wages of her sins, but there's more than a little hint of some incest he'd like to engage in.Charlton Heston said in his memoirs that he enjoyed working with Jennifer Jones, Karl Malden and the rest of the cast, but David O. Selznick, Jen's husband and svengali was one royal pain.The movie is trash, it don't pretend to be anything else, but it made a mint at the box office. If you liked Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, etc., you'll love Ruby Gentry.