Sounder (1972)

Dramatic movies about dogs tend not to end happily. Stories that won Newbery Medals have that reputation even more so. Perhaps it's fortunate that the title character has less importance to this movie than Toto has to The Wizard of Oz or Asta has to the Thin Man series. Either he plays a bigger part in the book, or he serves a metaphor.

The real focus is on David Lee Morgan, circa age 11, eldest son in a poor Black family of sharecroppers in 1933 Louisiana. Early on, his father steals and gets sent to a prison camp, leaving the rest even more desperate. At his mother's request, David Lee goes on a mission to find and visit the camp, with Sounder tagging along.

Harrowing? According to my sources, the book is more so on many counts. I did keep feeling like things were going to get worse than they did for all the heroes (only a one-year sentence?), and now I know why. Personally, I don't mind this toning down, but others may think it cheapens the drama.

One slightly toned-down aspect is the racism. For a while, it looked as tho nobody would express open hostility to Blacks in general. But it seems that government policy in that setting explicitly differs by race. Under no circumstances is a Black convict's family to learn where he's sent. There's a bit of sexism, too: Women can never visit their husbands at the local jail. The depicted authorities, for their part, refrain from slurs and typically claim that their hands are tied by higher authorities, but you can bet that a fairer-minded sheriff would make exceptions or at least turn a blind eye. As a rule, I do prefer fiction in which bigots try to hide their bigotry or even deny it to themselves.

If I'm right about the title signaling a metaphor, it probably pertains to what little we see Sounder do. He's a coonhound and thus obligated to work more than many dogs. He also perseveres when badly hurt. That's kind of what we see when even the youngest of three siblings joins the effort to make ends meet.

My chief hangup about this movie is its simplicity. I get that it was made with young viewers in mind, but as my short summary suggests, there aren't a whole lot of events to fill 105 minutes. It feels slow and vacant. There isn't much to the dialog, and the only actor who might add something extra is Cicely Tyson. David Lee does benefit from his trek, but any growth he experiences is subtle. The moral, insofar as there is one, doesn't connect very strongly.

Sounder had been a sort of oasis in the era of blaxploitation. I respect that, but where I as a viewer am concerned, I appreciate it mainly for not putting me in a lasting funk like I feared. Probably the best use of the film is to educate youngsters who know little about what life was like for rural Blacks in the Depression. The rest of us are liable to get better dramatic entertainment elsewhere.