Ode to Billie Joe (1976)
Max Baer Jr. spent almost a decade playing lovable cornpone hunk Jethro Bodine in TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies", which ran on CBS form 1962 to 1971.
So who in the world would ever guess that a few years after 'Hillbillies' ended, Baer would briefly emerge as a writer-director auteur of the Deep South.
As both writer and star, Baer struck nationwide boxoffice gold with his modest but powerful melodrama "Macon County Line", which riveted us city slickers just as much as the drive-in movie crowd below the Mason-Dixon line. (A film we promise to review in the near future.)
Suddenly a hot Hollywood property, Baer went on to write and direct the family drama "The Wild McCullochs" and then secured his biggest assignment ever...... guiding Warner Brothers' film version of country singer Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode to Billie Joe', her rambling, catchy, wildly popular story-song.
Gentry's epic length song, dripping with country flavor and attitude, recounted the sad, star-crossed love of two hormone engulfed teens, Billie Joe McCallister and Bobby Lee Hartley. Back in '53 on Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi, their romance went tragically awry when Billie Joe, for some unknown reason (in the song, anyway) threw himself off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
'Ode', much like Baer's 'Macon County Line' captured everyone's attention, both North and South....... and it fell to Baer and screenwriter Herman Raucher ("Summer of '42", "Sweet November") to not only bring the song to cinematic life, but tell what really destroyed the lives of these drawlin' cutie pies in the throes of their first love.
Presumably with Baer and Gentry's approval, Raucher came up with his own startling and dramatic gut-punching revelation......and considering the era and place the film is set in, a bold, way ahead of its time plot twist to deploy.
This film couldn't have found a director more appreciative and understanding of the material. Baer, if nothing else, knew in his casting and cinematography how to properly evoke the South of the 1950's. Devoid of any slick gloss, the film looks and sounds as weathered and lived in as the pickup trucks that roll across the wooden slats of the Tallahatchie.
And he couldn't have found two more empathetic actors for his leads. Robby Benson's Billie Joe, a sensitive outlier among the beer swillin' good ole boys comes a courtin' Glynnis O'Connor's Bobbie Lee with the amusing deliberate manner of a silver-tongued Southern gentleman. (Herman Raucher supplies his two young lovers with pseudo ornate mock Tennessee Williams dialogue that's jarring at first to listen to at first but then becomes sort of entertaining.
O' Connor, capable of appearing both beautiful and plain within the same camera shot, perfectly embodies Bobby Lee's sexual longings within a protective loving family......one whose father sees her only as still a little girl. While Benson might have the most showy role here (considering the traumatic event he endures), it's O' Connor, functioning as the narrator, who breaks your heart as the romance she wished for comes apart before her eyes.
(As for the film's whammer explanation of Billie Joe's demise, we'll not uncover the film's jumbo spoiler......but we will say that Raucher, Baer and the cast handle it with just the right amount of low key depth and a sense of inevitable sadness.)
Max Baer directed only one more film ("Hometown USA"), but with the cult 'Macon County Line' and the successful crowd-pleasing 'Billie Joe' he made the most of his brief time amid the chaotic, creative landscape of 1970's filmmaking and the exciting, emerging talents that emerged out of it.
Maybe it might appear too corny, obvious and overwrought for today's more jaded audiences, but we still appreciate the care and skill that went into this film. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
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