Second Big Screen Film Considered Best Ever Adaptation of Faulkner
The Big Screen film series announces the second film in its series: Tomorrow (1972)
on Saturday, January 30 at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus.
In the backwoods of Mississippi, a lonely farmer (Robert Duvall) agrees to look after a pregnant woman (Olga Bellin) who was abandoned by the father of her child. Tomorrow is based on the short story of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner. It was first published in the “Saturday Evening Post” in 1940 and later reappeared in the writer’s short story collection Knight’s Gambit.
Though it is considered one of Faulkner’s lesser-known stories, Tomorrow has been dramatized in three different mediums – each time by the same writer, celebrated playwright Horton Foote. In 1960, he was hired to adapt the story into a teleplay for an episode of “Playhouse 90” for director Robert Mulligan, who would later direct To Kill a Mockingbird (which featured an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Foote). Eight years later, Foote rewrote it as an off-Broadway play starring Duvall and Bellin, and, finally, as the screenplay for this version of the film.
Many critics believe this is the definitive adaptation of any of Faulkner’s work, and Duvall has cited it as his personal favorite of all the films he’s done. Listen for the accent that inspired Billy Bob Thornton in Slingblade.
Directed by Joseph Anthony. With Robert Duvall, Olga Bellin, Sudie Bond, Richard McConnell, Peter Masterson, William Hawley, James Franks, Johnny Mask, Effie Green and Ken Lindley.
103 minutes (Rated PG – B&W)
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