Review of Foxfire

Foxfire (1955)
4/10
Heap Big Culture Clash.
9 February 2012
Warning: Spoilers
The best thing about the movie is its glorious color images. What iconography! The hulking presence of the sun-darkened Jeff Chandler, the prismatic vibrancy of Jane Russell's wardrobe, the stunning majesty of her pale bosom, that candy-apple red 1954 Ford convertible, the canary yellow Jeep.

The rest of the movie is a snore. Jane Russel, with a snooty Eastern mother, meets and immediately marries the shy, reticent half-Apache Chandler. Since boyhood he has learned never to cry out for help. But Russell is compelled to nurturance. How could she not be, with that equipment? So it devolves into a good-natured soap opera in which a husband hides secret from his wife and she snoops into his affairs, makes a nuisance of herself, and almost runs off with the dipso doctor before the inevitable mine explosion brings them together for good.

Nobody really seems to have cared much about the quality of the film, which is just as well. It's probably Jane Russell's most loose-limbed and appealing performance. She was never much of an actress but seems to have been a nice, unpretentious lady. Chandler warbles the title song over the credits. He does not sing in the rest of the movie, nor does he do much of anything else. Celia Lovsky is the most hilarious Indian mother you can imagine.
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