So Red The Rose

This was the first major sound film to deal with the Civil War's effects on the Southern family. It preceded GONE WITH THE WIND by four years and Margaret Mitchell's novel by a year. Sullavan plays the daughter of Connolly and Beecher, the heads of the Bedfords, a wealthy plantation-owning family whose sons and cousins fought the North. Southern belle Sullavan falls in love with her cousin Scott who is opposed to the bloodshed occurring on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. While the picture is occasionally on target, it is more often uneventful-- and downright absurd in its treatment of the slavery issue.