This is really no more than a modest little film, made by young enthusiasts, about a poor farming family in rural Ohio with the added ingredient of an unorthodox love story. It is, however, a stunningly beautiful and engaging film with another tale to tell. Back in the 60s the film was mistreated and ignored, finally being re-edited as a sexploitation movie for the drive-ins, retitled, Miss Jessica is Pregnant. With the help of Nicolas Winding Refn the original has now been reassembled with a 4K restoration and amazingly has absorbed a couple of the sexploitation movie inserts to aid clarity of story. Watched today this is most impressive with arty photography combined with naturalistic acting. Indeed apart from John Crawford nobody here had done anything in film before or likely to do much after. With only the ambient sounds of birds or bluegrass music spilling out of the bar for a soundtrack and those wondrous misty landscape views as a background, the close-up and most convincing antics of the various participants sustains the viewer as the slight but dramatic and personal tale unfolds. Poetic.
