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.”
Meanwhile, Donny, despite having lost both his father and uncle to an unruly sea, stays under its spell. So, with her welfare hat on, Ann asks friend Mary McKay (Ann Revere) to care for Donny. Perhaps Mary’s disciplinarian ways will restrain him from drifting into deviance while he’s still impressionable. But Donny, watching Hod and his seafood-business partner out on their boat with lobsters and fish, is drawn to the sea, seemingly irrevocably.
Hod tries to fill that space, teaching that only a work-ethic that avoids shortcuts respects the work-ethic of others: “Do you think it’s right for somebody else to pay for your mistakes? Would you want a partner that didn’t pay his debts?”
Family Values, Mature Fatherhood
King’s scenes of a sea storm, a birthday party, a courtroom, and a welfare board office spotlight the family; these are shores of sorts to which individuals can return for solace and strength, even if they must venture solo now and then, for work, for play, for fulfilment.
Ann discovers that all Donny needs is “love, guidance from someone he trusts.” But how to trust someone who’s not there for you tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year? What in Hod’s masculinity makes him a good father?
Hod doesn’t allow his individuality to degenerate into individualism. He has his own island, his own house, his own boat, but he’s unselfish. He’s sympathetic toward his business partner’s fixation with farming, rather than fishing. Hod’s the one asking the women, Ann and Mary, to be more sensitive to Donny’s pride in working on his own, earning on his own, and to be more patient with Donny’s restlessness. He’s the one wanting to adopt Donny.
King contrasts the masculine instinct of embracing risk, adventure, and danger with the feminine instinct of embracing security, stability, and safety; women and men harbor both, to varying extents. But people won’t get (or stay) married, or rear children, if they swear only by instinct, or by what comes naturally.
King’s saying that adulthood only implies maturity, it doesn’t assure it. Mature adulthood demands that, like boats, we aim for beckoning horizons, but stay disciplined enough to return to our shores, anchored enough to respect our piers and ports. Without shores to stand on or set out from, we’re more likely to sink than sail. We may seem like adults, but we’ll seldom be mature.
