My husband asked me if this was a Disney movie, and I wasn't sure. It was a little too lite for a serious drama and then had some moments that were definitely to dark for Disney. Jimmy Stewart is good at chewing up the corn rows but most of the supporting younger actors were working with undeveloped characters and said little and woodenly when they did talk.
A few complaints:
Why did the Father take seven of his kids, including a daughter, to find the lost son, and leave the homestead protected by only one son, with a wife and baby. It would have been wildly dangerous to be traveling back and forth across battle lines at the end of the war. Better to have a few riders, and certainly not a young woman along. More dangerous was to leave such a wealthy home insufficiently protected. A fine home like that would have been ransacked and burned by both sides.
Speaking of the house. That was one very fine home for that era and location. A single farmer who had to clear his own land with a growing family would have had a more modest farmhouse with more common interiors. That was mansion for a man who was a politician or lawyer. Fine millwork, big rooms, nice furniture. Were there really mansions like that in the Shenandoah in the 1860's for a farmer? I'm surprised that the Confederate Army hadn't already seized his stock and crops earlier in the war. Cold Mountain was more realistic. So was Friendly Persuasion for that matter.
The scene where the scavenger trio go after the young wife was dark for a movie that up to that point had treated the female characters with delicacy. Again, it was the middle of the war, both armies are in the Valley. Yet the door is unlocked, and she didn't have a gun at hand to protect her baby?
Costumes were nice, and close to realistic, for a Hollywood film, no hoop skirts.
It just felt like a made for TV movie, or a John Wayne movie.
Review of Shenandoah
