The Corn is Green (1945)

(On Cable TV, April 2021) Inspiring teacher stories are often timeless, and seeing a star like Bette Davis aged fifteen years older in order to play a matronly teacher doing her damnedest to send a student from a poor remote mining town to Oxford is a high concept that remains accessible even decades later. Of course, there’s a difference between a good idea and a compelling execution, and while The Corn is Green is a serviceable example of its sub-genre, it’s not exactly riveting entertainment if you fall outside its intended audience. The recreation of a small Welsh town in a Hollywood studio is about as good as was possible at the time, while seeing Bette Davis heavily made up to look older and heavier is nothing short of interesting. Still, given the unsurprising, generally linear thrust of the plot, there isn’t much more to The Corn is Green than what you can gather from its log-line and production era. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’m going to remember it much longer.