Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (August 25, 2025)
If you ever craved to watch a fictionalized look at the commercialization of mass-produced cigarettes in the US, I bear great news! 1950’s Bright Leaf offers just such a tale.
In the southern location of Kingsmont, local tobacco bigwig Major James Singleton (Donald Singleton) forced competitors from the Royle clan out of town. In 1894, final surviving family member Brant Royle (Gary Cooper) returns to Kingsmont.
Brant plans to redeem the family name and get back at Singleton via the mass manufacturing of cigarettes. Unsurprisingly, he encounters blow back from powerful forces.
With only a few exceptions like 1952’s High Noon, I admit I find Cooper to usually damage the movies in which he appears. Too often wooden and without range, he creates a decent physical presence but his lack of emotional breadth means his work tends to leave me cold.
Does that change with Leaf? Not really, though Cooper handles parts of the role reasonably well.
Cooper fares best during the film’s first act. As Brant mainly seems like an angry man consumed with a desire to take down the Singleton empire, Cooper manages to evoke that single-minded fury pretty well.
After that, though, the character requires other dramatic shades. Cooper doesn’t flop but he struggles and seems less convincing as the role broadens.
Cooper simply can’t bring out the complexities necessary for Brant. It doesn’t help that the story gets less interesting as it goes, too.
No spoilers – even for a 75-year-old movie – but the death of a particular character acts as a pretty strong turning point. What developed as a reasonably compelling tale of obsession sputters after that.
Really, this all turns into what feels like an unnecessary epilogue. Leaf bites off a fairly epic narrative as it progresses, and this means it meanders along the way.
The movie fares best when it concentrates on Brant’s single-minded focus on revenge. When that element fades, the movie disintegrates along with it.
Oh, we get some potentially intriguing twists, but these just don’t connect. The movie keeps going well past the point where it should end.
We also find ourselves with an awfully trite love triangle. Brant pursues a relationship with Singleton’s daughter Margaret Jane (Patricia Neal), a choice that may come with ulterior motives.
Does Brant chase Margaret Jane out of actual love or as part of his plan to ruin Singleton’s life? The movie never makes this explicit, and this harms the story.
Margaret Jane offers an objectively awful person, so if Brant woos her for reasons other than vengeance, this feels like a strange dramatic choice. This becomes especially true because Leaf gives Brant a much more appropriate love interest via Sonia (Lauren Bacall).
Sonia runs a barely-disguised brothel, so one assumes Brant goes after nasty Margaret Jane instead of the smart and sexy Sonia due to social status. However, this becomes another element the movie doesn’t explore well.
As such, we find ourselves frustrated that Sonia gets the shaft and Margaret Jane “wins”. Granted, this connects to the movie’s third act in spoilery ways, but it still feels like a strange contrivance along the way.
Note that the film seems to suggest Brant, Margaret Jane and Sonia are all about the same age – or at least that Brant isn’t too much older than the ladies. In reality, Cooper was more than 20 years older than Bacall and Neal!
Which becomes a bridge too far, though that doesn’t become the biggest issue here. Instead, after an intriguing start, Bright Leaf just drags too much to wind up as a winner.
