Review of Ruby Gentry

Ruby Gentry (1952)
5/10
Jennifer in her Pearl Chavez mode again...shades of "Duel in the Sun"...
25 September 2006
Once again, JENNIFER JONES has problems while stirring up raging hormones in every man within sight, even when she's married to a respectable but boring middle-aged man (KARL MALDEN), because they all know she's still lusting after the man who got away (CHARLTON HESTON).

This is such over-baked, melodramatic corn that you can almost visualize it better as a silent film with tacky sub-titles while a woman with heaving bosom goes to pieces over a man she can't have because she is considered by the townsfolk to be an unworthy tramp and beneath the station of a well-to-do aristocrat.

But the soundtrack isn't silent and does produce a haunting melody, "The Theme from Ruby Genty" which was very popular at the time of the film's release. That and the pulp fiction quality of the film, directed in over-the-top manner by King Vidor, gave it a camp quality that had people comparing it to "Duel in the Sun".

It's strictly a minor melodrama with an overwrought Jennifer doing another interpretation similar to her Pearl Chavez.
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