NR | 1h 25 min | Drama | 1948
Novelist Ruth Moore often wrote of families whose fates were tied to Maine’s shores: its waters, its boats, its horizons, distant yet beckoning. Fittingly, Henry King’s screen adaptation of Moore’s novel “Spoonhandle” opens with text that reassures audiences that all outdoor shots were filmed in Maine.
King’s film is a coming-of-age story about pre-teen “state kid,” orphan Donny Mitchell (Dean Stockwell) and his yearning for acceptance and self-acceptance.
Welfare Board staffer Ann Freeman (Jean Peters) pauses plans to marry Hod Stillwell (Dana Andrews) on discovering that he’s set on becoming a fisherman. Haunted by the death at sea of Thatcher, her friend Molly’s husband, Ann isn’t ready to spend a lifetime worrying about Stillwell out at sea. Molly Thatcher tells Ann, “Ain’t a woman in this town that ain’t lost a husband or boy or someone.”…