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Cross Creek

  • 1983
  • PG
  • 2h 7m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
2.3K
YOUR RATING
Peter Coyote and Mary Steenburgen in Cross Creek (1983)
In 1930's Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.
Play trailer2:29
2 Videos
93 Photos
BiographyDramaRomance

In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and write... Read allIn the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.

  • Director
    • Martin Ritt
  • Writers
    • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
    • Dalene Young
  • Stars
    • Mary Steenburgen
    • Rip Torn
    • Peter Coyote
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.9/10
    2.3K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Martin Ritt
    • Writers
      • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
      • Dalene Young
    • Stars
      • Mary Steenburgen
      • Rip Torn
      • Peter Coyote
    • 34User reviews
    • 12Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 4 Oscars
      • 2 wins & 7 nominations total

    Videos2

    Trailer
    Trailer 2:29
    Trailer
    Cross Creek: Couldn't You Come With Me?
    Clip 1:09
    Cross Creek: Couldn't You Come With Me?
    Cross Creek: Couldn't You Come With Me?
    Clip 1:09
    Cross Creek: Couldn't You Come With Me?

    Photos93

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    Top cast20

    Edit
    Mary Steenburgen
    Mary Steenburgen
    • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
    Rip Torn
    Rip Torn
    • Marsh Turner
    Peter Coyote
    Peter Coyote
    • Norton Baskin
    Dana Hill
    Dana Hill
    • Ellie Turner
    Alfre Woodard
    Alfre Woodard
    • Geechee
    Joanna Miles
    Joanna Miles
    • Mrs. Turner
    Ike Eisenmann
    Ike Eisenmann
    • Paul
    Cary Guffey
    Cary Guffey
    • Floyd Turner
    Toni Hudson
    Toni Hudson
    • Tim's Wife
    Bo Rucker
    • Leroy
    Jay O. Sanders
    Jay O. Sanders
    • Charles Rawlings
    John Hammond
    John Hammond
    • Tim
    Tommy Alford
    • Postal Clerk
    Norton Baskin
    • Man in the Rocking Chair
    Terrence Gehr
    • Store Keeper
    Keith Michel
    • Preston Turner
    Nora Rogers
    • Mary Turner
    Kenneth V. Vickery
    • Minister
    • Director
      • Martin Ritt
    • Writers
      • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
      • Dalene Young
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews34

    6.92.2K
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    Featured reviews

    7Judge8080

    Fine film

    'Cross Creek' (1983) The story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her life in the backwoods Florida town of Cross Creek after moving there from New York in the 1930's to continue her writing. I have been a visitor to her home in Cross Creek and even today the area looks like it probably did 60 years ago. Mary Steenburgen does a nice job as the independent, hard drinking Rawlings and Peter Coyote is fine as Norton Baskin, who eventually became her husband. Nicely photographed with a lovely musical score, 'Cross Creek'is a slow, easy going movie and the viewer will enjoy the people in Ms. Rawlings life, particularly the always steady Rip Torn and the late Dana Hill. An enjoyable experience.
    7Wuchakk

    Decide what you want to do and then DO IT, come what may

    In 1928, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Mary Steenburgen) in her early 30s moves to a blindly bought orange grove near the hamlet of Cross Creek, in northern Florida, which is located on a strip of land between two large lakes (Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake). There she hopes to find the peace and privacy to launch her writing career. Peter Coyote plays a hotel owner from a nearby town that becomes fascinated by Marjorie while Alfre Woodard plays her maid. Rip Torn is on hand as an eccentric backwoodsman with Dana Hill appearing as his daughter who befriends a fawn.

    "Cross Creek" (1983) is a historical drama about the famous author of "The Yearling"; it's also part wilderness drama. Shot on location in gorgeous Alachua & Marion Counties, the film's worth watching just for the remote Floridian lushness. The theme is to die for as Marjorie DECIDES what she wants to do and then boldly (or stubbornly) DOES IT, come what may. Her first two short stories were published in 1931 and "The Yearling" in 1938, which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was made into a movie in 1946.

    The boggy locations are similar to those in "Frogs" (1972) and "Swamp Thing" (1982) while the topic and themes are reminiscent of "The Whole Wide World" (1996) and "Sounder" (1972). If you favor the latter two movies and appreciate the locations of the former two, you'll enjoy "Cross Creek."

    The movie runs 2 hours, 7 minutes.

    GRADE: B/B+
    10cwkoller5

    One of My Favorite Movies...

    No, I don't think Cross Creek will ever be put up there with Kane or Casablanca, but for some reason I made a connection with this movie the first time I saw it 20 years ago, and it remains one of my favorite films even today.

    Every creative person goes through the struggle to find their voice, and Cross Creek is about a city-bred writer who runs away to the country to live an ascetic life with her typewriter. She expects her isolation and alienation to "prod the muses" but instead finds these new people and this new land to draw her in until they and it become the soul of her writing.

    The natural, understated tone of the film allowed for a human resonance I've rarely seen in mainstream Hollywood fare. And while Mary Steenburgen and Peter Coyote are perfectly fine, Rip Torn and Alfre Woodard's performances absolutely floored me. They respectively brought Marsh Turner and Geechee to life with such abandon and clarity, it's some of the finest acting I've witnessed on film, period.

    I revisit Cross Creek every few years and it always holds up stylistically (Leonard Rosenman's score is timeless). Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings symbolizes America itself, in my opinion, so concerned with pleasing its own, yet progressively exposed to a foreign world that ultimately will shape its real identity.

    It's a universally human story and, like I said before, I really connect with this little film, and appreciate Director Martin Ritt's courage in making it the way he did. I can't guarantee that others will necessarily feel the same way, but I always recommend Cross Creek to friends, be they creatives or not.
    harry-76

    Retreat in the Backlands

    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.
    9cchase

    Engaging Semi-Biopic of a Great Writer

    When this movie came out nearly twenty years ago, I was completely aware of it, yet avoided it like the plague. Why? Because it was in the Top Ten lists of most of the noted critics that year, and because of preconceived notions I had about critics and their 'lofty' reviews at the time. I am kicking myself soundly now for having done so.

    For those few out there not aware of this remarkable film yet, CREEK is the biographical depiction of a period in the life of renowned author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, when she moved to a very rural area of Florida, became enamored of the place and its people, and was inspired during that time to write some of her best work, including the novel that defined her career, THE YEARLING. Mary Steenburgen's career was just starting to come into its own when she made this film, and her wonderful portrayal of the author as a strong, independent-minded woman at a time when being so was frowned upon is the movie's rock-solid center.

    Complementing her are marvelous turns by Peter Coyote as Norton Baskin, the man who becomes extremely interested in Marjorie and becomes a big part of her life; Rip Torn and Dana Hill as Cross Creek natives Marsh and Ellie Turner, the father and daughter who (according to this version of the story) become the inspiration for Rawlings' best-known work, and Alfre Woodard, who was also early in her career, playing Marjorie's somewhat skittish yet steadfast housekeeper, Geechee.

    Note must be made of all the actors in the small roles as well, as they all add to the ambiance of this quiet, almost serene backwoods community that Marjorie learned to call home, and where she did much of her best work. A particularly haunting part of the film is when she encounters a young backwoodsman named Tim (John Hammond) and his beautiful pregnant wife (Toni Hudson), who also become the basis of another important Rawlings' story, "Jacob's Ladder", which I am now determined to find.

    John Alonzo's photography brings an almost magical feel to the swamp and marshlands of the region, and Leonard Rosenmann contributes a score that accents rather than interrupts the movie's flow.

    Plus, there is a bonus in the form of an actor who was also an integral part of Steenburgen's personal life at the time, portraying Max Perkins, Marjorie's publisher. Fans of Mary will already know who I'm talking about, and it is a treat to see them together again after their previous film, TIME AFTER TIME.

    I wouldn't call this a 'family' film per se, since the younger ones who might be disturbed by THE YEARLING or OLD YELLER will find this just as disconcerting. But for adults especially, seeking to escape car chases, exploding buildings or the latest adolescent yuk-fest, CROSS CREEK will come as a welcome respite...as soothing and comforting as Ms. Rawlings eventually found it to be.

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    Related interests

    Ben Kingsley, Rohini Hattangadi, and Geraldine James in Gandhi (1982)
    Biography
    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)
    Romance

    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      Norton Baskin, portrayed in the movie by Peter Coyote and the real life second husband of the source novelist and film subject Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, has a small role in the movie as the man in a rocking chair giving directions to Marjorie to the hotel. Baskin also acted as a consultant to the picture.
    • Quotes

      [last lines]

      Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: [voiceover] I had become a part of Cross Creek. I was more than a writer. I was a wife, a friend, a part of the earth. Who owns Cross Creek? The earth may be borrowed, not bought, may be used, not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tenderness, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

    • Connections
      Featured in The Oscars (2020)

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    FAQ18

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 27, 1983 (Netherlands)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Crosscreek
    • Filming locations
      • Cross Creek, Florida, USA(Cross Creek)
    • Production companies
      • Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment
      • Universal Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross US & Canada
      • $200,000
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      • 2h 7m(127 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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