Cinema: New Picture, Dec. 12, 1949

Intruder in the Dust (MGM) is a too-earnest treatment of a wildly imaginative novel. The story, derived from one of William Faulkner's most polemic works, was shot almost entirely in Faulkner's home town (Oxford, Miss., pop. 3,500), with the author acting as a sidewalk superintendent during the filming. Nonetheless, the movie, stripped of Faulkner's peripheral probings into mind, heart and scene, is not only dead serious but dead on its feet; its cautious approach to its material results in a film that is more like an arty still photograph than a motion picture....

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