Beneath Pedestrian.A kind of dull Southern Gothic. Poor Jennifer Jones, her hair mussed and her jeans muddy, is from the wrong side of the tracks. The good inbred folks of Thanatopolis, North Carolina don't pay no attention to her and her hunting and traipsing round. Except high-class Charlton Heston. He finds her, well, curiously attractive. But when he returns from a spell in the big city, he seems to have acquired scruples and, however much regard he has for Ruby, he's been tied to the wealthy and somewhat snooty Tracy since childhood. They get married.In return, out of spite as much as anything else, Ruby married the wealthy, good-natured, and bulbous-nosed millionaire Karl Malden. He really loves her. And she's beginning to grow fond of him too, just before he's killed in a boating accident. The community blames her. The local paper hints at murder. But -- HAH! -- Ruby is rich now and wears sunglasses and glamorous clothes. She also buys up every promissory note in sight and demands payment, which demolishes half the town's businesses and ruins Heston's plans for the future.That's as far as I want to go with the plot, for a couple of reasons. One is that I don't want to spoil it. Another is that the climax comes virtually out of the fog, a kind of deus ex maniac.What an ordinary movie this is. I don't know if you're familiar with the song "Ruby." It was a popular hit at the time of this movie's release, sung by Nat King Cole among others. If you haven't heard the tune before, that's okay. It will become an indelible part of your declarative memory by the time this ordeal is finished. It's the only music we hear. The overscore is "Ruby" and variations on "Ruby." If someone in the film turns on the radio or plays a record, the tune is always "Ruby," usually on a quivering harmonica. It's almost a relief when somebody sloshes through a North Carolina swamp and all we hear is the weird cry of the Australian kookaburra.How dull. Except for its budget, which is quite modest, and its black-and-white photography, it could easily have been a made-for-TV number on Lifetime Movies. It was directed by King Vidor, who must have been in some sort of post-ictal twilight state throughout. He allows ALL of the principals to overact outrageously. Heston would go on to much better things as he matured, but here he's wooden and snarly. Jones could be in a silent movie, where the overuse of body language is expected. Some of the characters are so bad, they're actually amusing, though not excuse enough to watch this dreary feature.

In Braddock, North Caroline, the free-spirited and poor Ruby Corey (Jennifer Jones) is a sexy woman in love with Boake Tackman (Charlton Heston), who belongs to a former wealthy family that lost their land that is flooded. Ruby has lived during high-school with the wealthy businessman Jim Gentry (Karl Malden) and his wife Letitia Gentry (Josephine Hutchinson) that had unsuccessfully tried to teach etiquette to Ruby. Later she returned to the house of her father Jud Corey (Tom Tully) and her pious brother Jewel Corey (James Anderson) in the swamps. When Boake decides to marry the rich Tracy McAuliffe (Phyllis Avery), Ruby is courted by Dr. Saul Manfred (Bernard Phillips) but accepts to marry Jim that has recently widowed. The population of Braddock does not accept the marriage of Ruby and Jim. Then, Ruby dances with Boake in a club and Jim has a fistfight with Boake and calls Ruby a tramp. On the next morning, Jim apologizes with Ruby and they go sailing. However there is an accident and Jim drowns in the sea. Ruby is accused by the population of murdering Jim and she decides to revenge, using the money she inherited from Jim and foreclosing on the debts of the hometowns. But Ruby is still in love with Boake and her behavior will lead them to a tragedy."Ruby Gentry" is a melodramatic romance directed by King Vidor, the master of this genre. The melodrama is excessive, with a wild young woman in love with a popular young man in a conservative town. Her revenge against those that blame her is great but the conclusion is silly. Rubby working as a skipper of a fishing boat does not make sense for a woman with her strong personality (and money). My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "A Fúria do Desejo" ("The Fury of the Desire")

...in romantic pairings .Their love/hate relationship compares favorably with the one depicted in "duel in the sun" which featured Jones too.This actress epitomizes romantic passion ,and no one equaled her in this field (as a French I can tell she was the best Madame Bovary I had ever seen).Ruby was born on the wrong side ,that's what we are told at the very beginning of this story of sound and fury.In the Vidor family,she is akin to Pearl in "duel in the sun" ,to "Stella Dallas" and even to Rosa in "beyond the forest".Like Rosa ,she dreams of the social ladder but unlike her,she can love and it's her downfall.Raised in a family with a fanatical brother who brandishes his Bible like a gun,she will never be able to get out of the swamp ,even with all the money in the world "You can't buy your way out of the swamp".Even when she uses it to destroy everything and all her fellow men's lives,she can still hear this pump ,which is like a beating heart.The movie is actually a long flashback ,which reinforces what the first lines are saying: Ruby was not born in the right place at the right time.

Once again, JENNIFER JONES has problems while stirring up raging hormones in every man within sight, even when she's married to a respectable but boring middle-aged man (KARL MALDEN), because they all know she's still lusting after the man who got away (CHARLTON HESTON).This is such over-baked, melodramatic corn that you can almost visualize it better as a silent film with tacky sub-titles while a woman with heaving bosom goes to pieces over a man she can't have because she is considered by the townsfolk to be an unworthy tramp and beneath the station of a well-to-do aristocrat.But the soundtrack isn't silent and does produce a haunting melody, "The Theme from Ruby Genty" which was very popular at the time of the film's release. That and the pulp fiction quality of the film, directed in over-the-top manner by King Vidor, gave it a camp quality that had people comparing it to "Duel in the Sun".It's strictly a minor melodrama with an overwrought Jennifer doing another interpretation similar to her Pearl Chavez.