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.
- Nominated for 4 Oscars
- 2 wins & 7 nominations total
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe fiddle tunes Rip Torn's character plays, and the style in which they are played, are authentic to the region and era. They are based closely on recordings of Cush Holston, an old time fiddler who was from rural north Florida and recorded at an advanced age at a folk festival in 1960. The tune Torn sings is Holston's "Coon Dog," and the instrumental he plays before this is also from Holston, "Have a Good Time Tonight." The actual playing for the film was done by a Florida old time musician who had studied and researched the music of Holston.
- 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.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Oscars (2020)
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.
- harry-76
- Dec 30, 2002
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Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $200,000