Novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings took to the backwoods of Florida in 1927 to work on her literary projects.
She left behind a husband who was unwilling to relocate, and fashioned a working studio in the most rural of southern locations.
The trials she experienced, both creatively and physically, are depicted in this slow-moving, yet well-intentioned enactment.
Filmed in lovely Technicolor in Marion and Alachna Counties, Florida by John Alonzo, to the accompaniment of a lush score by Leonard Roseman, the movie attempts to capture Rawling's varied experiences in pursuit of her writing goals.
Like many films of true-to-life creative artists, one has little factual evidence as to the accuracy of this tale. The challenges Rawlings faced in attempting to first write her "Gothic novel" and getting rejected by a publisher, are carefully acted out.
Only when she changes her subject to that which she is actually experiencing there in Florida does her publisher accept the manuscript.
Since there's not much dramatic about a writer "pecking away" at a typewriter, the script finds other things to depict. When a local girl has an emotional "turn" involving a pet deer, and when the focus is on our heroine's saving her farm crops from devastation, another plot begins to be recalled.
One realizes this is the story of the woman who finally wrote the beloved family classic, "The Yearling."
The film version of that novel, after a failed attempt in the early forties with Spencer Tracy, was finally brought to the screen in 1946 by Director Clarence Brown, with Gregory Peck. That movie captures the essence of Rawlings' work, again in a beautiful Florida setting.
"Cross Creek" may perhaps appear to lack focus or be too deliberately paced for some tastes. At the same time, it has its heart in the right place in expressing Rawlings' unusual "artist retreat," as well as her steadfast dedication to her craft.
For those who think writing is easy, this may be a stark awakening as to the tenacity it often takes to birth a respectable literary work.
