Please help identify this film!
October 23, 2016 11:11 AM Subscribe
Sitting around at the pub and a friend is dying to find the name of a film she saw as a child - please release her from this cinematographic purgatory!
Here are the details she can recall:
- set in the deep American South
- maybe set in the 1950s?
- in colour, and definitely an American production
- plot is about a poor redneck family who is sent to a work camp (?); the children are separated from their parents at the camp
- the baddies keep threatening to "set the dogs" on people, and this eventually happens
- the mother of the family may have been Frances McDormand but probably not - she definitely had that type of character, strong and there for her family
- it was seen in the late 90s on Channel Four in England
If it helps, the dog chase was terrifying! Thanks guys!
Here are the details she can recall:
- set in the deep American South
- maybe set in the 1950s?
- in colour, and definitely an American production
- plot is about a poor redneck family who is sent to a work camp (?); the children are separated from their parents at the camp
- the baddies keep threatening to "set the dogs" on people, and this eventually happens
- the mother of the family may have been Frances McDormand but probably not - she definitely had that type of character, strong and there for her family
- it was seen in the late 90s on Channel Four in England
If it helps, the dog chase was terrifying! Thanks guys!
Frances McDormand movies which are set in a midcentury time period, made before 2000:
- Mississippi Burning (no "work camp", but it's about the Civil Rights Movement so maybe setting dogs on people?)
- Chatahoochee (takes place in a mental institution and is about mistreatment of people with mental illness)
- Paradise Road (takes place in an internment camp for European women in Singapore during WW2; I could *definitely* see this plus maybe some misremembered elements of Empire Of The Sun combining in your friend's mind to form the movie in question)
- Talk Of Angels (takes place during the Spanish Civil War)
posted by Sara C. at 11:57 AM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
- Mississippi Burning (no "work camp", but it's about the Civil Rights Movement so maybe setting dogs on people?)
- Chatahoochee (takes place in a mental institution and is about mistreatment of people with mental illness)
- Paradise Road (takes place in an internment camp for European women in Singapore during WW2; I could *definitely* see this plus maybe some misremembered elements of Empire Of The Sun combining in your friend's mind to form the movie in question)
- Talk Of Angels (takes place during the Spanish Civil War)
posted by Sara C. at 11:57 AM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I don't know if there's a dog attack in the movie, but possibly The Long Road Home? It's a 1991 TV movie about a family of migrant workers in the Great Depression. Lee Purcell played the mother, and she has a certain Frances McDormand quality. Normally I wouldn't think a U.S. TV movie like this one would air in the UK, but it looks like the producer was British, so who knows.
posted by northernish at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by northernish at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Not White Dog about a racist dog? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNW2VKcpQA
posted by johngoren at 12:34 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by johngoren at 12:34 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thank you all so much! She really thinks that it's The Long Road Home - the Dust Bowl, non-Frances McDormand lead (sorry if that threw you off the trail, Sara C.) - but we haven't been able to find any clips on the web to confirm. This interview with Mark Harmon is tantalising but not quite enough! We'll keep searching for a clip to nail this one down.
[Definitely not White Dog but holy shit that's amazing.]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 12:48 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
[Definitely not White Dog but holy shit that's amazing.]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 12:48 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
If it's not The Long Road Home, something about your description makes me think Days of Heaven (1978). Brooke Adams was the female lead, Richard Gere the male.
posted by Dragonness at 11:03 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Dragonness at 11:03 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
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Also... there *weren't* "work camps" or any sort of involuntary resettlement of white people in the USA during the 1950s. Your friend's memories just don't add up to a movie that could possibly exist, because there's nothing like that in history that could be documented. Unless it's a science fiction/dystopian movie?
Could this be a movie about the Great Depression set in a Hooverville or among the resettlement camps set up for Okies fleeing the dust bowl?
My two thoughts are that this an extremely garbled version of Empire Of The Sun (partially takes place in a refugee camp, storyline of a child separated from parents, takes place in the 1940s) or a colorized version of The Grapes Of Wrath (a family tries to stay together despite the ravages of the Great Depression, partially takes place in a Resettlement Administration camp, seems like the kind of story where someone might set dogs on people). Frances McDormand is in neither movie.
posted by Sara C. at 11:44 AM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]