Inescapably wholesome Jennifer Jones tries once again to get low-down and trampy in this strange melodrama--it doesn't have the trashy splendor of her previous camp classic "Duel in the Sun", but the comparative restraint of "Ruby Gentry" somehow makes it seem even more absurd. Jones is supposed to be the daughter of a family of swamp-dwellers, but her hair, makeup, and costumes remain flawless from beginning to end--her idea of "backwoods tramp" is somewhere between Helen Hayes and Doris Day. She's caught in a doomed romance with rake Charlon Heston (just like the one with Gregory Peck in "Duel", although Heston is slightly more convincing)--the two of them spend their scenes twisting their bodies into increasingly distorted positions, mashing their mouths together, clawing at each other's hair, etc. Jones' fundamentalist brother occasionally blathers on at her about her "unforgivable sins", although the unforgivable career damage is not mentioned; the romance abruptly ends in an extended shootout scene in that pure-Hollywood "swamp". All of this happens because Ruby was "born on the wrong side of the tracks" (an offscreen narrator reminds us of this fact about seven hundred times). Next time, move the tracks.
Review of Ruby Gentry
