(3 of 3)
Deep Valley (Warner) is a story about lonely people, and what the breakdown of their loneliness does for them—and to them. A remote California farm is abruptly opened to contact with the world when a convict road gang bulldozes its way into the neighborhood. The daughter (Ida Lupino), a loveless, stammering slavey, runs off and hides in the woods with a fugitive convict (Dane Clark). Her malingering mother (Fay Bainter) and her embittered father (Henry Hull), forced to depend on each other, strike off the shackles of their years of hatred. The main story centers, of course, on the transfigured Miss Lupino, her violent sweetheart and their hopeless romance.
It is a rather pathetic picture because everyone concerned with it is obviously trying very hard to do something good, powerful and out of the ordinary. Occasionally, this effort brings the picture to life. There are also a few good flashes of melodrama. But on the whole, Deep Valley is reminiscent of many of the solemn little-theater plays of the early '20s: i.e., it is lost in mawkishness and pseudopoetic feeling masquerading as art.