The Southerner is a 1945 American drama film directed by Jean Renoir and based on the 1941 novel Hold Autumn in Your Hand by George Sessions Perry. The film received Oscar nominations for Best Director (the only Oscar nomination Renoir received), Original Music Score, and Sound. Renoir was named Best Director by the National Board of Review, which also named the film the third best of 1945. The film portrays the hardships of a poor family struggling to establish a cotton farm in Texas in the early 1940s.
Plot
In this rural drama, Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) is a Texan cotton picker who aspires to run his own farm and create a better life for his family, which includes two kids and the irritable Granny Tucker (Beulah Bondi). Aided by his beautiful wife, Nona (Betty Field), Tucker begins to work a neglected plot of land, but numerous difficulties arise, including bad weather and conflicts with jealous neighbors, making it hard for the Tuckers to get ahead.