Southern Reconstruction

The Reivers is a raucous, good-natured ode to the end of innocence --a kind of motorized Huckleberry Finn. William Faulkner's original novel spun a mellow tale about an eleven-year-old lad named Lucius McCaslin and his wild-eyed adventures on a trip to Memphis in 1905. Screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., having done previous Faulkner adaptations in The Long Hot Summer and The Sound and the Fury, by this time know the Yoknapatawpha territory more than passing well. Their sharp and reverent screenplay, featuring a felicitous narration by Burgess Meredith, helps make The Reivers one of the year's most pleasant movie experiences.

Young Lucius (Mitch Vogel) spends most of his time hanging out with a casually amoral employee of his grandfather's named Boon Hogganbeck (Steve McQueen). When Grandfather (Will Geer) and the rest of the family leave town for a few days, Boon borrows their prize possession--a gleaming and glorious yellow Winton Flyer. He persuades Lucius to tell a string of whoppers to the relatives caring for him and, in the company of a genial black man named Ned McCaslin (Rupert Crosse), drives downstate to the big city. Boon wants to see his girl Corrie (Sharon Farrell), a particularly comely employee at Miss Reba's "boarding house." Ned is just looking to raise a little hell and Lucius goes along to watch the sparks fly.

Before his return to Jefferson four days later, Lucius has gotten an eyeful of sparks. He has been stabbed for defending Corrie's good name against the slanders of her rotten nephew Otis ("Imagine," says a wondering Boon as he cleans out the wound, "eleven years old and already knife-cut in a whorehouse brawl"). He has found himself in the middle of a quarrel between his pals and Sheriff Butch Lovemaiden. And he has become involved in the damnedest, most exciting horse race anybody ever saw.

Director Mark Rydell (The Fox) carefully and lovingly reconstructs the turn-of-the-century South, and his reconstruction--perhaps a shade too soft of focus and rich of pastel--remains affectionate and without condescension throughout. The performers are uniformly excellent, with a special nod to young Mr. Vogel and Will Geer, who at film's end delivers a cautionary lesson to a stolid, recalcitrant Lucius in his best grandfatherly tones: "A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he didn't instigate them himself, didn't say no though he knew he should. Now go wash your face. A gentleman cries too, but he always washes his face."

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