MartinHafer "The Sun Shines Bright" is an offensive portrait of the post-Civil War South and it's hard to imagine the film NOT offending anyone. Instead of showing real life in Kentucky, it's super-idealized to such a point that the film is ridiculous. The Confederate Civil War veterans get along just great with the Union vets (Kentucky was one of the few states that had folks fighting on both sides), the blacks are all extremely happy and life is grand. No matter that all this just isn't true and that blacks were treated, often, as subhuman. In the original film, "Judge Priest", Will Rogers played the Judge and his ever-present lazy, stupid black sidekick, Poindexter, was played by Stepin Fetchit. Rogers, however, had been killed long ago in a famous plane crash and here the character is played by Charles Winninger and Fetchit is back to play the same stupid and lazy guy-- something Fetchit did in many films back in the day when laughing at a stupid and lazy black man was considered the rage. But his subhuman characterization is more sad than anything else...and I cannot imagine folks today thinking it's funny.As for the stories in the film, they are all mildly interesting and they are engaging. You can tell it's a John Ford film even without a decent budget and fancy cast because it is highly sentimental. It also paints a portrait of what life SHOULD have been like--with the paternalistic white man looking out for their good little black children. It's odd, however, that the same racist director then went on to make "Sergeant Rutlidge" with Woody Strode--a film far ahead of its time and extremely sensitive to the dehumanization of black Americans. So would I recommend this film? Not really. It's certainly among the director's lesser movies and is so inaccurate a portrayal that the retired history teacher within me felt a bit sad as I watched. Not horrible...just not what life was ever like in Kentucky...ever.

Robert J. Maxwell The director was John Ford, a notorious teller of tales. When asked by critics which of his movies he liked best, he sometimes cited "The Sun Shines Bright." To understand why he'd make such an outrageous claim, we must understand that Ford loved to cause disappointment and pain in others -- especially critics.Actually it's a low-budget and confusing jumble of several of Irwin S. Cobb's stories about the laid-back South. Not a bankable name among the cast. But we do get to see the last of John's brother Francis as a tattered old drunk in a coonskin hat, a role he'd been playing for twenty years. Frank had been a matinée idol in the early years of motion pictures, a handsome young hero, and it must have pained him to be so degraded on the screen but, as I say, John loved to see pain.And if you're truly into political correctness, this is an excellent place not to look for it. The judge is the pudding-faced Charles Winninger. He's a fair and courageous judge. Everyone realizes that. But still he has one of those chocolate-colored jockeys holding up a hitching post in front of his gate. That's not to mention Steppin Fetchit: "Yassuh, Boss, but you overslepp." But it's certainly a John Ford project. Many of his stock company put in their appearances: Jane Darwell, Jack Pennick, Russell Simpson, Grant Withers, Milburn Stone, among others. We even get to see an early work of John Russell and the teen-aged Patrick Wayne. Russell is a curious-looking guy. He was an intelligence officer on Guadalcanal with the Marine Corps and he looks it -- tall, brawny, handsome. But handsome in a way that's uncanny, unearthly, as if he were really an animated plastic mannequin.It's definitely a lesser work, by turns raucous and sentimental. Ford pulls out all his usual stunts and throws them haphazardly together. There's the grand march, the singing of hymns, the mano a mano fight, the Ladies Temperance Society. If you want nothing more than to sit back and be diverted for an hour and a half, this should do the job.

JoeytheBrit It would be nice to be able to discuss this film without having to refer to its politically incorrect depiction of blacks, but it's impossible to do so. The film, which is a remake of director John Ford's own Judge Priest from the 30s (in which Will Rogers played the title role), must have seemed curiously dated even when it was released, and feels like it was made in the early forties rather than the mid-fifties. Whether that's because of its outdated attitude towards blacks and the presence of slow, scratchy-voiced Stepin Fetchit is open to conjecture – it could just be that the fog of nostalgia that hangs over the entire work is the reason.Charles Winninger makes an amiable old judge whose quiet wisdom puts to shame the hypocritically puritanical attitudes of his small town's people and the racist assumptions of an unruly lynch mob out to hang a blameless teenage Negro. The storyline is kind of meandering, reflecting the apparently relaxed pace of life in the turn of the century Deep South, and you do really get a taste of Southern gentility – whether accurate not. Its various sub-plots are linked together by the judge's bid for re-election, which serves to emphasise the importance of standing by one's principles no matter what the possible personal costs may be. Of course, the truth is Billy Priest is too good to be true, but I don't think anyone was out to make him a more realistic figure in this milieu than Santa Claus or God would have been.John Ford's notorious sentimentality is in danger of becoming cloying at times, but he just about manages to rein it in at key moments. The film says as much about Hollywood's take on American social attitudes in the mid-50s as it does about the same in the Deep South at the turn of the century, which isn't in itself a bad thing. I suppose it's even possible that one day films like this will be shown in classrooms to demonstrate the gigantic positive strides made in the cause of racial equality in the latter half of the 20th Century. Better that than they are wilfully ignored in the name of political correctness.

Kalaman Believe it or not, John Ford always used to say his most beautiful and honest pictures were not actually Westerns; they were small, unambitious stories without big stars about communities of very simple people. 1953's "The Sun Shines Bright", the last movie he made for Argosy Pictures and Herbert J. Yates, was THE movie Ford always liked to refer to as his absolute favorite, one that came close to what he wanted to achieve, along with "Wagon Master" and "The Fugitive".It is a work of great beauty, a lovingly crafted remake of the director's extraordinary 1934 Will Rogers vehicle, "Judge Priest", based on some folksy Judge Priest stories by Irving S. Cobb.What distinguishes "Sun Shines Bright" from "Judge Priest" is its rigid, formal structure. It is an extremely complex work on many levels: the acting, photography, camera work, montage, and music. Each scene is intricately shot, mounted, and choreographed with precision and clarity amidst some singing, dancing, parading. It is basically the work of an old man, entirely bereft of the sublime, soft-focus, Griffith-inspired rural simplicity of "Judge Priest", though both movies share the same themes and preoccupations. But "Sun", I think, is a better and more stirring experience, with its carefully crafted passages of a prejudiced community in the Old South at the turn of the century.In "Sun", Ford densely weaves a series of intertwining vignettes concerning a classic Fordian hero: William Pittman Priest (magnificently played by Charles Winninger), a small town Kentucky judge who powerfully heals, mediates, and reconciles the tensions of his intolerant community, reminding it of its racial prejudices while subtly acknowledging the strength and significance of its Civil War history. He is also a celibate and a lonely figure who persistently lives for his community, leading them to a better future. Priest has an affinity with other Fordian heroes such as Tom Doniphon of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", Will Rogers, young Mr. Lincoln, Ethan Edwards of "The Searchers", and "7 Women"'s Dr. Cartwright.Priest is occasionally accompanied by his African-American comic sidekick Jeff Poindexter (an aging Stepin Fetchit who also accompanied Will Rogers in "Judge Priest"). Though painfully segregated, both blacks and whites overlap and are integrated through song and music. Here, Jeff plays harmonica on Priest's porch; U. S. Grant Woodford plays "Dixie" in the courtroom; and almost all of the characters parade and sing "In Old Kentucky Home" at the end. In a moving scene that recalls the near lynching in "Young Mr. Lincoln", Priest painfully calms a lynch mob accusing an innocent black man of raping a white woman, a scene that was apparently cut from 1934 "Judge Priest".Priest also finds himself running a re-election against a right-wing prosecutor Horace K. Maydew ("Young Mr. Lincoln"'s Milburn Stone). Unlike his radical opponent, Ford portrays Priest as a tragically complex figure, capable of grasping the feelings and complexities of his divided community. He has an acute understanding of the importance of tradition while discerning the need for social change. In what is perhaps the movie's most spectacular moment, Priest stages a funeral procession of a dead prostitute from Cobb's short story "The Lord Provides" - a stunning sequence that it should easily be ranked along with one of Ford's finest achievements."The Sun Shines Bright" did poorly when it was released and over the years it disappeared into an undeserved obscurity. It is often overshadowed by Ford's other film of the year, the entertaining Safari yarn "Mogambo". And yet it seems to me one of Ford's top four or five masterpieces. It may be sternly old-fashioned and sentimental by today's standards, but it is an extremely personal work that should be viewed within its own merits.See it and let me know what you think.