Sommersby **** (1993, Richard Gere, Jodie Foster, Bill Pullman) – Classic Movie Review 2817

Director Jon Amiel’s classy 1993 mystery romantic drama is a splendidly sumptuous, poignant film. Richard Gere and Jodie Foster give unexpectedly sturdy performances in the kind of movie they’re not usually associated with – the period costume romance.

This American remake of the 1982 French movie The Return of Martin Guerre, with its story transferred from France to the US, seems at heart little more than basically a rather daft, novelettish anecdote as it is presented here. But the story is told with enormous conviction and given the full monty treatment with a beautiful production designed by Bruno Rubeo and filmed on location in Virginia, gorgeous photography by Philippe Rousselot, an ideal cast and lush music in Danny Elfman’s score.

Gere plays the Confederate soldier of the title, Jack Sommersby, who apparently has returned back from the American Civil War to reclaim his home and his wife Laurel (Foster). He returns to her farm and her bed but, with him a changed personality, there is every suspicion that he may be an imposter. And Orin Meecham (Bill Pullman), his rival in his absence for Foster’s hand, is out to make trouble.

Amiel makes a grand job of swirling the film along, achieving a convincing period atmosphere while not letting that get in the way of efficient storytelling. But the central triumph is the Gere-Foster partnership, full of enough conviction and sexual chemistry to make it work and then some.

For those prepared to succumb to an old-fashioned tearjerker, this is the plushest kind of a long-endangered species – the sort of movie everybody says they don’t make any more. But when they do make them, if they can make them this well, they are wildly popular like this one was.

Also in the cast are James Earl Jones, splendid as the trial judge, Lanny Flaherty, William Windom, Maury Chaykin, Wendell Wellman, Brett Kelley, Clarice Taylor, Frankie Faison, R Lee Ermey, Richard Hamilton, Karen Kirschenbauer, Dean Whitworth, Stan Kelly, Stephanie Weaver, Khaz B, Ray McKinnon, Stuart Falen, Barry McLerran, Richard Lineback, Michael Gold, Joe Basham, Patrick Morse, Joe Neel and Harry T Daniel.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2817

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