G | 1 h 45 min | Drama, Comedy | 1972
Set in Depression-hit Louisiana, director Martin Ritt’s film is about an impoverished black family, the Morgans: Nathan (Paul Winfield); Rebecca (Cicely Tyson); their eldest son who goes to school, David (Kevin Hooks in his debut); their younger children, Earl and Josie, and their beloved dog, Sounder.
To the Morgans, poverty isn’t some distant social phenomenon, it’s a lived reality. They feel it in their hunger pangs, they see it in each other’s parched lips, and they feel it in their aching bones, as they spend years sharecropping on a farm. Punishing exhaustion lulls them to sleep at night, and a grim reminder of a day’s labor still ahead rouses them each morning….