The Corn is Green (1945)
- General info
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- Synopsis:
- Schoolteacher Lilly Moffat (Bette Davis) is dismayed by conditions in a Welsh mining town. She sets up a school to teach fundamental education to the villagers. Her housekeeper and daughter oppose the project, as does the local Squire who will not rent her space. Using part of her own home, she goes ahead with Miss Moffat's School. One of her students Morgan Evans (John Dall) turns from bully to brilliant student.
- Actors:
- Bette Davis, John Dall, Nigel Bruce, Rhys Williams, Rosalind Ivan, Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Shields, Gwyneth Hughes, Thomas Louden, Joan Lorring, Jack Owens, William Roy, Carol Ann Beekly, Edmund Breon, Arthur Carrington, Ralph Cathey, Robert Cherry, Sanders Clark, Robert Cory, Elliott Dare
- Directors:
- Irving Rapper
- Writers:
- Frank Cavett, Casey Robinson
- Studio:
- Ll
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
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Reviews (1) of The Corn is Green
All Corn, No Green - The Corn is Green review by griggs
What in the name of everything holy was John Dall doing with that accent? Every time he opened his mouth I half expected subtitles.
The Corn Is Green wants to be a warm story about education cracking open a closed-off mining village, and there’s a decent idea buried in there about talent nobody else had bothered to notice. Trouble is, the film treats the Welsh as a job lot of comic props — illiterate, superstitious, bursting into song the second a coal seam appears. A couple of the actual Welsh cast sneak some truth past the caricature, which only makes Dall’s warbling stand out more.
Bette Davis anchors the whole thing with conviction, dragging sincerity out of a script that keeps laying the uplift on with a trowel. It’s pleasant enough, the period trappings have their charms, and the condescension still manages to outstay them both.
The corn’s green. Everything else is painted by numbers.