Several things put "The Yearling" far above any movie of nature, childhood, or animals that has appeared in the last few years. Its producers must have realized that the original novel needed no new "twists" or fetching young women, to be put across; just a few good astors, suitable scenery photographed in technicolor, and enough imagination to see the real movie possibilities of the book. All of these are here, and the result is something worth seeing.

Those who are thoroughly sick of Lassic and all the sentimental pictures about thoroughbreds will naturally be wary of this one about a Southern home steader's boy and his pet fawn. But with the exception of a few views of the clouds to the accompaniment of singing voices. "The Yearling" suffers from none of the normal vices. The inscious, wooded setting is portrayed with the right amount of whimsy to suit the romantic tale, and the characters are people you can become interested is. For example, when the boy finally has to kill his pet, who has began to eat the crops now that he has grown up, the superb restraint of the parents makes the scene a really moving one.

It is restraint throughout that saves the picture from becoming mandlin. Jane Wyman, who has hitherto seemed, to be an actress with partly concealed talents, does a splendid job as the mother, who has prematurely lost all her youth by the death of three children in infancy. Gregory Peck, rather a child's memory of his father than the real thing, does about the best that can be expected in his unsatisfying role. But Claude Jarmans, as the twelve-year-old hero, carries the burden of the film, as well as the acting honors.

Although "The Yearling" may remind one of the haunting nature novels of W. H. Hudson, happily it plays safe in keeping its feet firmly on realistic ground. As a background for the romance are the problems of a small farmer in feeding his family, while he lives more or less cut off from the world. The necessary influence of the few contacts with the outside is made clear, and thus the story is kept credible and interesting. On this basis, the fresh imagination of Miss Rawlings' novel delights, hardly ever falling into dreaded bathos.