''Sometimes a Great Notion'' (also known as ''Never Give A Inch'') is a 1971 American
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
,
Michael Sarrazin
Michael Sarrazin (May 22, 1940 – April 17, 2011)
Richard Jaeckel
Richard Hanley Jaeckel (October 10, 1926 – June 14, 1997) was an American actor of film and television. Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominatio ...
in an
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
Ken Kesey
Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Kesey was born in ...
, the first of his books to be adapted for the screen. Filmed in western
Oregon
Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...
during the summer it was released over a year later in
Plot
The economic stability of fictional Wakonda, Oregon, is threatened when the local logging union calls a strike against a large lumber conglomerate. When independent logger Hank Stamper and his father Henry are urged to support the strikers, they refuse, and the townspeople consider them traitors. All of the Stampers live in one compound, including Henry's good-natured nephew Joe Ben.
Hank struggles to keep the small family business alive and consequently widens the rift between himself and his complacent wife Viv, who wants him to put an end to the territorial struggle but is resigned to his doing things as he sees fit. Also complicating matters is Leland "Lee" Stamper, Henry's youngest son and Hank's half-brother, who returns home with a college education and experience in urban living. A heavy drinker, Lee eventually reveals he attempted suicide after his mother killed herself and has been suffering from deep depression ever since. He urges the neglected Viv to leave.
Despite the fact that he is uncomfortable living with a family he barely knows, Lee joins forces with them when they are forced to battle both the locals, who have burned their equipment, and the elements, which threaten their efforts to transport their logs downriver. After aiding their adversaries when their lives are in peril, the Stampers are handed two calamities at once, a falling tree that severs Henry's arm, and a trunk that crushes Joe Ben in shallow water.
Lee takes his father to the hospital, while Joe Ben laughs at his own predicament until the tree trunk rolls atop him, pinning him down. Hank's desperate rescue attempts fail as the tide rises, drowning Joe Ben. At the hospital, Henry dies after finally expressing his approval of Lee, who informs Hank that Viv has left him. Hank returns to an empty home and appears for a while to have given up. Ultimately, he decides to deliver the logs, alone if necessary, but Lee joins him. Lining up along the riverbank, the Stampers' rivals look forward to seeing them fail, but the brothers are successful. Henry's severed arm is attached to the boat, giving the middle finger to all who watch.
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
Michael Sarrazin
Michael Sarrazin (May 22, 1940 – April 17, 2011)
Richard Jaeckel
Richard Hanley Jaeckel (October 10, 1926 – June 14, 1997) was an American actor of film and television. Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominatio ...
Roy Jenson
Roy Cameron Jenson, also known and credited as Roy Jensen, (February 9, 1927 – April 24, 2007) was a Canadian American football player, stuntman, and actor.
Early years
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Jenson moved to Los Angeles with his family as ...
as Howie Elwood
*
Joe Maross
Joseph Raymond Maross (February 7, 1923 – November 7, 2009) was an American stage, film, and television actor whose career spanned over four decades. Working predominantly on television in supporting roles or as a guest star, Maross performed in ...
as Floyd Evenwrite
*
Melissa Newman
Melissa Stewart Newman (born September 27, 1961), also known as Lissy Newman, is an American artist, singer and former actress who appeared in the 1990 film ''Mr. & Mrs. Bridge'', and at the 30th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards.
Career
On the ...
as Lissy Stamper (uncredited)
Production
Although both
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic '' The Wild Bunch'' received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institut ...
and Budd Boetticher had expressed interest in bringing Ken Kesey's novel to the screen, Richard A. Colla was signed to direct the film in May 1970. Five weeks after principal photography began, Colla left the project due to "artistic differences over photographic concept", as well as a required throat operation. At the same time, leading man Paul Newman broke his ankle, and the production shut down As co-executive producer, Newman considered replacing Colla with
George Roy Hill
George Roy Hill (December 20, 1921 – December 27, 2002) was an American film director. He is most noted for directing such films as ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' (1969) and ''The Sting'' (1973), both starring Paul Newman and Robert Re ...
, who declined the offer, so when filming resumed two weeks later, Newman was directing as well
The fictional community of Wakonda was filmed in various locations in Lincoln County along the
Oregon Coast
The Oregon Coast is a coastal region of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to its west and the Oregon Coast Range to the east, and stretches approximately from the California state border in the south to the Columbia ...
. These included Kernville and other locations along the
Siletz River
The Siletz River flows about to the Pacific Ocean through coastal mountains in the U.S. state of Oregon. Formed by the confluence of its north and south forks near Valsetz in Polk County, it winds through the Central Oregon Coast Range. The ri ...
, as well as
Yaquina Bay
Yaquina Bay ( ) is a coastal estuarine community found in Newport, Oregon, United States. Yaquina Bay is a semi-enclosed body of water, approximately 8 km² (3.2 mi²) in area, with free connection to the Pacific Ocean, but also diluted ...
, the
Yaquina River
The Yaquina River ( ) is a stream, long, on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of Oregon. It drains an area of the Central Oregon Coast Range west of the Willamette Valley near Newport.
It rises in the mountains west of Corvallis along the c ...
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini, ; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Award ...
, is performed by
Charley Pride
Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934 – December 12, 2020) was an American singer, guitarist, and professional baseball player. His greatest musical success came in the early to mid-1970s, when he was the best-selling performer for RCA Rec ...
.
The film was one of the first two programs (after a
New York Rangers
The New York Rangers are a professional ice hockey team based in the New York City borough of Manhattan. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home ...
–
Vancouver Canucks
The Vancouver Canucks are a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division (NHL), Pacific Division of the Western Conference (NHL), Western Conference, and ...
NHL game) and the first movie presentation to be broadcast by
Home Box Office (HBO)
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...
when the
pay television
Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...
network launched in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the s ...
on November 8, 1972, airing less than two years after its initial theatrical release. When it was finally aired on commercial television in 1977, it was retitled ''Never Give A Inch'' ic a reference to the Stamper family philosophy.
Critical reception
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' called it "an extremely interesting, if impure (happily impure, I might add) example of a genre of action film that flourished in the 1930s in movies about tuna fishermen, bush pilots, high-wire repairmen and just about any physical pursuit you can think of . . . As in Howard Hawks's '' Only Angels Have Wings'', these films are, at their best, considerably less simple-minded than they sound—being expressions of lives lived almost entirely in terms of rugged, essentially individualistic professionalism . . . Mr. Newman . . . has been remarkably successful both in creating vivid, quite complicated characters and in communicating the sense of beautiful idiocy that is the strength of the two older Stampers. As he showed in '' Rachel, Rachel'', Mr. Newman knows how to direct actors . . . ishandling of the logging and action sequences . . . is also surprisingly effective, not because of any contemporary fanciness but because of what looks like a straight-forward confidence in the subject. My only real objection to the film, I think, is a certain impatience with the screenplay, which lumberingly sets up almost a very physical and emotional crisis that can (and, indeed) must erupt before this kind of movie can be said to have decently met
Roger Ebert of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
'' rated the film three out of four stars and described Newman as "a director of sympathy and a sort of lyrical restraint. He rarely pushes scenes to their obvious conclusions, he avoids melodrama, and by the end of ''Sometimes a Great Notion'', we somehow come to know the Stamper family better than we
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, dark humor, non-linear storylines, cameos, ensembl ...
called it "a good somewhat compromised movie, that is justly famous for one of the greatest scenes in early seventies cinema... This isn’t an attempt to turn a great novel into a equally great film. It’s simply an effort to take the material in the novel and fashion a movie out of it. The problem lies in the fact that the actors do such a good job creating the family dynamic of these selfish hard heads, you wish the production attacked the material from the outset with more ambition."
The film has a rating of 100% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
.
Awards and nominations
Home media
On the evening of November 8, 1972, ''Sometimes a Great Notion'' was the first film to be broadcast on
Home Box Office
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...
.
On December 18, 2012, Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray for the first time.
See also
*
List of American films of 1971
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...