Friendly Persuasion

As always, William Wyler does a great job of developing the characters in this film. Gary Cooper is a perfect fit as a Quaker with his slow style.

I very much buy into the bucolic dream Gary Cooper and his family inhabit - one of happy families, content community, bountiful orchards and soothing creeks, all tied together with the noble ideals of peace and goodwill to all. The civil war puts this Eden on a collision course with the real world and inevitably those ideals will be tested. And so we have a pretty movie posing interesting moral questions, but one also interlaced with a ton of subtle humour. Excellent.

A remarkably deft touch in terms of balancing levity and gravity. Gary Cooper struggles to maintain his Quaker principles in the face of outside world temptations and challenges with an easy charisma without ever over playing. Anthony Perkins has several remarkable scenes as well.

81.50

Doesn't embrace the character's struggle with their morals enough to really work. Wyler prefers to stand at the sideline and snicker at them.

Star Rating: ★★★★1/2

For the longest time it seemed like someone decided that Quakers in 1860s Indiana + Gary Cooper is a movie right there, and that person was probably right. William Wyler's deep compositions are well-employed in the countryside, and the movie is charming without being cloying.

Kinda flat. Wants to be a straight drama, but spends entirely too much time making fun of its central characters and their beliefs. It is rather swell, however, to see Norman Bates with eligible bachelorettes hanging all over him