The Natural

I made a reference to this film the other day and was surprised to see that I'd never added it to our Movies In History list.  As its a great period movie, I'm correcting the omission.

Nearly anyone who reads this will have seen this movie already.  Released in 1984, the film was based on a 1952 novel by the same name, meaning that the book had taken a surprisingly long thirty years to reach the screen.  The plot surrounds a single baseball season in 1939, but the very early part of the story set in 1923 is critical to the story.  We learn, early on, that in 1923 the then 19 year old protagonist, Roy Hobbs (played by former university baseball player Robert Redford) has a chance to enter the major leagues as an absolute stand out baseball player.  On his way to his tryout as a pitcher he strikes out a Babe Ruth like figure as a demonstration, and then has his tryout disrupted by the intervention of a literal femme fatale (played by Barbara Hershey). The story picks up again in 1939 at which time Hobbs is 35 years old and has lost contact with those back home.

Much of the film is allegorical involving the struggle between good and evil, with evil personified in the form of dramatically beautiful women played by the aforementioned Barbara Hershey and a young Kim Basinger, and good likewise personified partially in female form in the character of Hobb's teenage girlfriend (Glen Close).  The remainder of the roles are all male as they make their way through the season and through a battle of good and evil metaphorically.

This is a great film and its likely the best baseball movie ever made.  It's a great American movie.

Regarding material details, having viewed it again just the other day, I was struck how accurate the details are.  Period baseball uniforms are exact, but more amazingly crowed details are incredibly well done.  The crowd looks more accurate and more in place for a 1930s vintage crowd that crowds in sports movies made in the 1930s do.  It's simply amazing.

As this is a very studied film, like all films, there are some errors in material details. But they are very minor.  Once scoreboard depicted in actual stadium, for example, is noted not to have been present in 1939.  The Star Spangled Banner is sung before an opening ball was thrown, which wasn't actually done before every game until World War Two (it was done during World War One and then discontinued and reinitiated during World War Two). But these are minor errors. All in all, the film is amazingly well done.