I wrote about the 1972 film Tomorrow, a Horton Foote adaptation of a William Faulkner story, starring Robert Duvall (same year as The Godfather) for Film Comment. It’s screening on TCM this month. Years ago, I remember my father talking to me about Duvall’s performance in this, only my dad couldn’t remember the title, and I hadn’t seen it yet and there was no Internet so I couldn’t help him out. But Dad had such a love for this performance. He may not have remembered the title, but he remembered the plot, and boy, did he remember Duvall. Years later I saw the film and realized within the first 5 minutes that this was the movie Dad had been talking about.
Today is Robert Duvall’s birthday as well, so the whole assignment has had a very pleasing symmetry.
Beautifully written, Sheila.
Thank you, Stevie!
Few actors could have given as powerful a performance.
I so agree.
Great recommendation Sheila, and terrific write-up. I admit after a year of Doctor Strange and Rogue One, it took me a bit to settle into the pace and rhythm of this film. Once I did I found it very rewarding. The look of the movie was unique; I really felt the cold in that cabin. (Did it influence The Hateful Eight I wonder?) A simple story but ultimately very powerful. The movie really snuck up on me. Duvall was terrific of course.
It’s fun to go back and watch a movie like this. The DNA of Tender Mercies is obviously there, in terms of pacing and structure, and of words left unsaid as well as spoken. Fans of that movie will probably like this one.
But the movie that it really reminded me of was Sling Blade, so much so that I thought Billy Bob Thornton must have been influenced. A search led me to an BOMB Magazine article where BBT was interviewed after Sling Blade, and like me the interviewer saw the connection. BBT had seen the movie and while he didn’t note it as directly influencing Sling Blade, he did have high praise:
JB Did you ever see that movie Tomorrow by Joseph Anthony?
BBT Oh, I love that movie.
JB Best movie ever. Something about the light, it was really like the way it looks down south. Even though the film is black and white.
BBT It’s true. That was a terrific movie, golly, one of my favorites. It came out in ’72, but I didn’t see it until 1988. But I flipped out when I finally did see it.
JB It seems like it’s in your vein. Especially if you like someone like Erskine Caldwell.
BBT Sure, it was based on a Faulkner short story, and then Horton Foote wrote the screenplay and Duvall plays the main character. All the best guys in one movie.
JB You think of novels, how everything falls into tidy classifications: southern regional writers, like Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor. You could do the same thing with films, only no one ever thinks of it that way. Sling Blade reminded me in some way of Tomorrow. The light definitely reminded me of being in Arkansas. And the slow pacing, it’s kind of gentle.
BBT That’s the only way I want to do movies, more like a book on film than a movie. In movies, everything’s supposed to be cinematic and shouldn’t have all that talking, but that’s what I like. I like characters.
JB It’s a lot more memorable than fancy camera moves.
BBT I learned a little bit about lenses and things like that. It was half-ass interesting to me, but at the end of the day, I really didn’t care. If the emotional content is there in a scene, that’s all that’s important to me.
Todd – Very glad you saw it! It’s really something special.
// I admit after a year of Doctor Strange and Rogue One, it took me a bit to settle into the pace and rhythm of this film. //
Oh dear. Yes, you want to watch out for that!
// Did it influence The Hateful Eight I wonder? //
If so, then I don’t think QT quite understood the movie. Or how to create and utilize a dramatic setting.
Thanks for that interview with BBT! I definitely thought BBT had basically stolen Duvall’s voice/prosody for Sling Blade so it’s interesting to hear his thoughts on that. He knew everything about the movie – and it’s also interesting because Tomorrow is this Holy Grail type movie – for years, it was impossible to find. My dad had seen it on TV and never forgot it – but before the Internet you were really stuck if you wanted to track something down again.
But it has a quiet authenticity that is very rare – especially in films that take place in the South. It’s not condescending. I think that’s one of the issues with adapting Faulkner for the screen, as Horton Foote notes in that quote I included in the piece. The attitude is always wrong.
Robert Duvall is not a Southerner – although he’s played so many of them! He has a great respect for the culture, I think – part of his empathy as an actor, his broad-mindedness about people. You can really see that in Tender Mercies and you can really see why he and Horton Foote were kindred spirits.
Oh I MAKE myself watch older movies sometimes to try to stave off the ADD that Michael Bay and Paul Greengrass seem to insist I get.
By total coincidence Sling Blade was on last night and I watched the 2nd half. Still a great movie, and I miss John Ritter. Great “kid” performance from Lucas Black. But boy it’s hard not to think BBT cribbed his entire performance from Tomorrow, even if he won’t admit it. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I guess. I mean what’s he supposed to say? And I totally forgot that Robert Duvall played Karl’s father in Sling Blade! That’s a pretty strong sign to me.
And your not a Hateful Eight fan, huh?! That movie is nothing if not polarizing. I disliked it the first time but felt immediately that I would like it more the 2nd time, and I’ve now seen it a bunch of times and love it. (I have re-watching issues, which is why I don’t see nearly enough new stuff!) But no arguments if anyone hates that movie, there is plenty to hate.
Of course it has nothing in common with Tomorrow, and EVERYTHING influenced Hateful Eight, but the visceral feeling of cold and wet permeating a snowbound cabin, and people huddling around a wood burning stove, just seemed a bit similar to me.
// Oh I MAKE myself watch older movies sometimes //
I am the opposite. I am so used to the pacing in old movies (which is much more efficient, even if it’s slower) that I am often viscerally irritated by the quick pace of new movies – it feels lazy to me – like everyone knows there’s not much substance but as long as they keep quick-cutting nobody will notice.
and yeah, the voice in Sling Blade is a total steal, the more I think about it. In Duvall it sounds organic, though. With BBT I’m not so sure. Cosign on John Ritter! He was so good in that!!
I’m okay with Hateful 8. But I don’t think he used that set well at all – and I don’t understand why you would pick wide-screen technology to do a movie that takes place entirely inside. This is what happens when you get so big that nobody says No to you anymore. He needs some naysayers around him. His 2 films before that were brilliant – his best – so Hateful 8 just feels like a weird egomaniacal self-indulgent glitch. We’ll see.
I had remembered this movie as my first memory of seeing Mr. Duval in a film; I could not remember the name of the movie. I have been a Faulkner devote since I began reading him in the 9th grade back in 1964. Tonight I decided to find the name of the movie by typing in “Robert Duval in a William Faulkner movie”: success . I’ll watch “Tomorrow”, maybe tomorrow but not right now; just finding it is remarkable, since the way I felt after watching it originally was remarkable. I am not a literary nor a film critic, but I do appreciate a good film version of good literature. I’m about to chase down D. H. Lawrence’s “The Gypsy and the Lady” also.
Linda – I’m happy you tracked it down. Google can be such a help. It’s such a powerful quiet little film. I love it so much.
Goodluck! It’s unbelievably expensive on Amazon. We got it through our library rentals, who work with out of state libraries. It took many months to get it.
I’m only a year-plus late on this. Just watched Tomorrow for the first time. I went looking for anything written about it, with your name in the back of my mind as someone who’d do it justice – and there you were! Full disclosure: I almost stopped it about ten minutes in – I felt Duvall’s voice was over the top, and maybe the first time I EVER felt like he wasn’t inside the character, but “doing” a character. I was wrong. So glad I stuck with it. The Sling Blade connection is obvious (I read the comments above and they aligned with my assumptions regarding BBT’s attention to this movie) but certainly superficial in light of the depth of this performance. That said, the performance is balanced/enhanced beautifully by the lighting around it – it was almost like watching a Bresson or Renoir film, characters just suffused with the delicate world around them. I can’t believe the DP, Allan Green, only did ONE theatrical film. Huh?!
The movie was so hard to see for a long time – it was on my “available soon” list on Netflix for maybe five years, then it showed up on Kanopy (streaming service from local library). I’d just watched To Kill a Mockingbird again, learned of the Duvall-Foote connection with this film, and am a top-twenty-films-level fan of Tender Mercies (the fastest slow movie I’ve ever seen, though A Ghost Story might be nipping at Mac Sledge’s boot heels), so loving this movie was a shoe-in. Dodgy at first, but I fell into its southern spell – often recalling my own childhood in northern Louisiana. Great writeup, Sheila, and obviously a great film.
// with your name in the back of my mind as someone who’d do it justice – and there you were! //
Robert – I love to hear this! Thank you!
The film definitely rewards you once you stick with it. Thank goodness for Kanopy!
Duvall and Horton Foote were definitely soul mates, or kindred artistic spirits – whatever you want to call it. There’s a likeness of sensibility there – the same is true for Kim Stanley (who played the female role in this with Duvall in the original theatrical production and then in the live TV production) – Kim Stanley was another Horton Foote muse.
I’ve had Duvall on the brain this week because Rambling Rose was screened at Ebertfest – and of all the great performances Duvall has given, I think that one is his best. I will eventually write an essay on it – I’ve never written about it before, but the film is now fresh in my mind again. I hadn’t seen it since its first release and it’s just as powerful as I remembered it.
It’s the kind of film that doesn’t really get serious critical commentary … it also could never be made now. At least not the way it was made then.
So your showing up here to discuss Duvall feels like kismet. What a fine fine actor.
No false notes in his canon. The closest, and it may’ve been the direction, can’t recall well enough (so probably was), was Get Low. I really need to revisit. And I REALLY need to visit for the first time Rambling Rose. Saw your FB post about the showing at Ebertfest and added it to my must see list.
Duvall grounds anything he’s in, at least during his scenes. Recently watched his Twilight Zone ep “Miniature”, one of his early TV bits – you can’t believe that you’re accepting the story of a man who’s fallen in love with a doll house figurine, but he’s so convincing that he goes so far as to hold “her” to his cheek and cry…and you’re crying too. How does he do it?? Those moments by the water toward the end of Secondhand Lions, of all things…the way he pauses before “true love never dies”…you’re wrapped up in his unspoken loss of so many things. But then forget about all the things that start off great and he just makes them greater: Santini, The Apostle, Mercies, Network, and so on…
Love reading your passionate take on fairly well anything.
Robert – wow, I have not seen his Twilight Zone ep – it sounds incredible!!
In re: Rambling Rose … It may sound like “fightin’ words” to say it’s Duvall’s best – considering – but I think it is. In particular during one scene – which is positively breathtaking in such a unique way – I mean, Mitchell and I have been talking about it for 30 years or whatever.
It’s also lovely because it’s a comedy. It’s wonderful to see him in this Gentle Patriarch mode (as opposed to Great Santini Bully Patriarch).
Out of all of the big-wig 70s actors – he and Gene Hackman are my favorites. Nothing against Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman – they’re all wonderful – but there’s just something about Duvall.
I must see this Twilight Zone ep now!
Episode’s playing on Hulu, if you’ve got that. Season 4, Episode 8. Only down side, season 4’s the (one and only) season that went an hour per episode, and even This Huge Fan feels like they dragged ’em out. I suppose in this case, that’s about 20 minutes more of Duvall tapping the restraint brakes, so it’s got that going for it.
With you on Duvall and Hackman. They both do comedy well (Tenenbaums!), but unlike the others, they never went into self-parody. Walken and Nicholson are the other iconic figures from that era who squandered a bit of their greatness, methinks, by humoring the “I know him from the people who impersonate him!” crowd. When I watch Pacino/De Niro/Walken/Nicholson’s stuff from the ’70s, I’ve always got a thick blinder up to hide the later stuff (much of which is still good in and of itself, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it an extension of what made them great). What I’m saying is, I’m happy that Duvall and Hackman never really did that. Their body of work is more pure for it.
I feel I may have said some stuff there that would require more nuance to not sound pedantic and generalized. Clearly they all did and still do some good work. I’ll let myself out now…
Robert – yes, it’s such an interesting group of actors, right place right time for their particular brand of anti-hero, or ambivalence about male-ness, or whatever.
I think past the 70s many of these guys faltered – as the movie industry changed (post Jaws, post Star Wars) – and it took a while to find their sea legs. I think now – as old men – they’re doing some work as interesting as what they were doing back in the 70s.
Although Hackman and Duvall both have seem to have almost vanished, right? – whereas Hoffman and DeNiro and Pacino are still showing up all the time. I miss Hackman and Duvall. Nicholson is another fave – and he’s almost vanished too. Nicholson’s “old man” parts have really thrilled me. Something’s Got to Give – which manages to call up all of our associations with him – but he’s not parodying himself. He’s settled into himself. He’s so beautiful in that movie.
I definitely think Duvall had more range than all of them put together. He was less “imitatable” – he didn’t go for the brass ring in histrionics – I mean, think of him in The Godfather – It’s just not in him to push, there’s a lack of ego there that has served him really well.
Would be interested to hear your take on Rambling Rose! He’s so lovely in it!
This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It was my first to see Robert Duvall. I don’t care what people say about his accent. This was a perfect movie. The passion for the beloved pregnant woman and her little son reverberate in my memory through all these many years. Here is alcoholic William Faulkner stretching his powerful empathy to show us how everyone can be loved. That guy is the greatest American author and fortunately, I knew some of his family members–descendants. They and so many people were changed by this unsual lonely man who was seeking to understand human nature.
Hello! Thank you for your beautiful heartfelt comment. I loved writing this piece about this very special film.