So Big

Jane Wyman is an affluent young schoolgirl in late 19th century Chicago whose father manages to lose his fortune and his life in one afternoon. Destitute, she is forced to accept a job as a school teacher in a nearby farm town, moving in with the family of local farmer Roland Winters.

His son Richard Beymer doesn't attend school because he needs to work on the farm, but Wyman realizes he has a taste for literature and music. She gives him private lessons after school, and soon he's developed a crush on Wyman. But Wyman has fallen for local farmer Sterling Hayden and they soon marry.

Wyman and Hayden have a son whom she nicknames "So Big" due to his rapid growth. She realizes he shares her interest in the arts and starts planning a better future for him. But Hayden dies and Wyman ends up having to run the farm herself. She faces hardships, but eventually turns the farm around and earns enough growing fine asparagus (!) to send So Big, now grown up to be Steve Forrest, off to college to become their shared dream ... an architect.

Forrest graduates and becomes a draftsman at an architecture firm, but impatience with his lack of advancement and prompting from his society girlfriend leads him to abandon his dream and become a salesman. Wyman is crushed, but Forrest earns piles of money and is happy until he meets artist Nancy Olson, whom he loves, but she dumps him because he isn't an architect.

This adaptation of Edna Ferber's much adapted novel is Robert Wise's first foray into a genre he will return to many times in the 1950's ... decidedly middle-brow, literate melodramas. This one is extremely hard to find, probably because it's not terribly good and has very little to offer modern audiences.

Wyman plays the main character from schoolgirl to old lady without changing a single aspect of her performance. Hayden is lively and virile as the big, dumb farmer, but he's in far too little of the film to really bring it to life. It's a strange, very episodic melodrama that seems to want to push the idea of artistic values over commerce while very clearly being an example of the latter over the former.

I enjoyed the movie, not just because of the cast, but because of the faithfulness to detail, r/t the actual book, "So Big" by Ferber. It shows the values of responsibility not just to our work, but to people, and to the beauty that is all around us, if we would just open our eyes and see it.

This is a remake of the 1932 version starring the great Barbara Stanwyck. Not quite a shot-for-shot remake. This version is longer and includes some material the original left out and has a slightly more cynical ending than the original. All you need to know about the first version is Warner Bros./ First National/ Vitaphone, which equates to a mass produced, assembly line product running typically 60-80 minutes in length. That's just how most Hollywood films were in the early 30s. And often times, the movie suffered, as a result. All that being said, this version is considerably better.

Jane Wyman is great as always, and by this time in her career, she was able to be much more selective of the types of roles she chose. Sterling Hayden is pretty much the same in every role he ever appeared in: stoic; regardless of the material. Nancy Olson does a good job, but is not on screen hardly at all. The biggest problem, however, is Steve Forrest as Wyman's son. He's stiff, bland, and doesn't appear to have any acting ability whatsoever.

The most curious aspect of this picture, however, is it's director,... Robert Wise. Wise first made a name for himself early on as the editor for Orson Welles' first two films, "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons". This is one of only a few directors (the other 2 who come to mind: Howard Hawks and George Cukor) who made a movie in every genre. And to go a step further, he made masterpieces in every genre except perhaps comedy and western (horror- "The Body Snatcher", "The Haunting"; sci-fi- "The Day the Earth Stood Still", film noir- "The Set-Up", "Odds Against Tomorrow", musical- "West Side Story", "The Sound of Music", drama- "The Sand Pebbles", "Somebody Up There Likes Me")

Does this sound like someone who should be directing a remake of "So Big"? (He already had "The Set-Up" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" under his belt.) That's not to say there's anything wrong with this picture. It is what it is: an above average melodrama. The point is a much less talented director could have handled it. It always amazes me how such a brilliant man like this wasn't appreciated more. His career was filled with films just like this, sandwiched in between his great ones. It was quite common at that time for directors to be assigned to direct something, often without even having a chance to read the script before deciding whether they wanted to or not. Saying 'No' to the studio bosses wasn't much of an option either, if you wanted to keep working. And I can't help but wonder if that was the case quite frequently with Wise as well, directing whatever he was told to. As a result, he's never mentioned with the great directors, and that's very unfortunate. If you haven't already, make it a point to start watching his movies. Not just his masterpieces, all of them. This is a great director who deserves to be more recognized.

Remarkable soaper gets bravura lead performance by Jane Wyman. The scenes in New Holland are excellent with young Richard Beymer a standout as a student who has a crush on Wyman. Steve Forrest is excellent as Wyman's son. Martha Hyer is a bit out of her league as the would-be vamp seeking to lead Forrest astray. But, why quibble? The production values are first-rate, the writing is excellent, and the score is magnificent.

In the third and final big screen adaption of Edna Ferber's novel, Jane Wyman essays the role of the schoolteacher who moves into a community of Dutch immigrant farmers in the Midwest and changes her life forever as she goes from rich débutante to a farmer's wife and widow. Wyman takes pride in her work and her child whom she nicknames So Big.

Jane's family fortune was lost when her parents died and she was forced by circumstance to become a schoolteacher. She's assigned to the Midwest town of New Holland and she works hard to teach the Dutch immigrant children. She also meets and weds sturdy farmer Sterling Hayden who leaves her a widow with a child and a farm to manage.

She meets the challenge and in doing so finds what Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh called 'the nobility of toil' in her work. So Big is Edna Ferber's ode to the agricultural life, there is indeed something special in seeing the seeds you plant grow into something. It's a lesson she imparts to her son who when he's full grown is played by Steve Forest. Forest in fact becomes an architect, but his mom literally and figuratively drags him back down to earth every so often.

Wyman's best scenes are with the various children who play her son Dirk, aka So Big at various stages of life. The film probably deserved to run a bit longer because I don't think all of Edna Ferber's thoughts were translated to the screen. Still So Big holds up well as fine family entertainment, as good as it was when released in 1953.