BY STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—What is “Vermont?” Certainly, it’s a physical place where real people live their lives, with all the joys and sorrows, ups and downs, plusses and minuses, of life in any other place. But it’s also an abstract concept to many people who don’t live here. And that concept of “Vermont” has changed greatly over the years, just as the place itself has changed.
Last Friday, the Brandon Museum hosted Amanda Gustin of the Vermont Historical Society for a presentation, “Vermont in Film,” at Brandon Town Hall. The program focused on the changing perception of Vermont, as seen through its depiction in film throughout the decades, from the silent-film era to the present.
“I looked for movies that portrayed Vermont in a particular way,” Gustin said. “Not movies that were filmed here but were supposed to take place somewhere else. I looked for movies that were about Vermont in some way and shared an idea of Vermont from an outsider’s perspective.”
The earliest known moving images of Vermont were shot in 1897, of a cavalry parade in Colchester. But the state’s proximity to New York City, a hub of moviemaking in the silent era, made the place a frequent setting for early films.
“But most of those films have been lost,” noted Gustin. Those early efforts weren’t particularly valued as artistic endeavors and little energy was spent trying to preserve them. The film stock itself was prone to spontaneous combustion and a good number of silent films literally went up in smoke.
One silent-era film that has survived, though, is Way Down East from 1920. It starred Lillian Gish—the “Julia Roberts of her day,” as Gustin put it—as a small-town girl who “loses her way” in the big city and returns home a “sullied” woman. The climactic scene, of Gish on an ice floe in winter, was filmed in White River Junction and proved to be so logistically difficult and physically injurious that it was decades before film crews ventured up to the Green Mountains again. By this time, as well, the film business had pretty much relocated to the West Coast. “Vermont” then became a sound stage in Hollywood.
In the 1930s, Hollywood used Vermont as a symbol of morality, in stark contrast to the decadence of the big cities. At that time, Vermont was known as an ardently conservative place, a fierce guardian of Republican small-government principles. Characters spoke with Pepperidge Farm accents, mistrusted outsiders, and resisted change.
In ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” from 1936, Gary Cooper plays a Vermont man who inherits a huge fortune and moves to New York, where he tangles with city slickers after his newfound riches. He manages to outfox them, keep his money, and “get the girl” in the bargain. The film absolutely buys into the idea of Vermonters as “pure” and was also one of the first examples of the stereotype of the flinty Yankee who gives bad directions—the “can’t get theah from heah” New Englander.
1940’s “Young People” starred a teenaged Shirley Temple as a girl whose family worked in Vaudeville until the father decides to move everyone up to Vermont in search of a more wholesome life. But the locals refuse to accept them until they prove their decency and commitment to the town during a crisis. One scene depicts a Town Meeting where a progressive’s pleas for change fall on deaf ears.
Gustin pointed out that in the 1930s and 40s, during the Depression and before the interstate system, Vermont wasn’t easily accessible and wasn’t yet a vacation spot. It was still seen as remote and politically static. That began to change in the postwar period, when Americans were feeling flush and ready to travel.
“White Christmas,” from 1954, is a perfect example of this change in perception. In this film, Vermont is seen as a winter wonderland, where snow is a sacred sign of Christmas and inspires the beloved title song. “I do wonder if the Vermont Tourism Board didn’t have their thumb on the scale in this movie,” Gustin joked.
This era also saw the beginning of “Vermont as a character,” according to Gustin. The landscape itself—bucolic and pristine—became the focus. Hitchcock used it to great effect, for example, in 1955’s “The Trouble with Harry,” which featured Vermont’s technicolor fall foliage in a way not seen on film before.
By the time the 1970s rolled around, Vermont itself was changing from staunchly conservative to brazenly progressive. Yet it was still a small-town sort of progressivism—as opposed to the big-city liberalism of places like San Francisco and New York. It was a place where to which urbanites fled to escape the rat race, to live a simpler life, to rediscover their humanity. In most of these movies, the struggle of city slickers to adapt is eventually made worthwhile by the rewards of small-town community.
However, some films, like 1988’s “Funny Farm,” starring Chevy Chase, took a dimmer view of life in Vermont, seeing the locals as exploitive of newcomers and small-town life as less-than-ideal, even though the main characters do end up adapting and finding happiness in their new home.
The influx of big-city refugees during the pandemic has shown us that Vermont still has a certain hold on the American imagination as a respite from the difficulties of urban life. As long as Vermont is able to offer a counterbalance to city life, it’s likely to continue to be used in cinema as a stand-in for small-town virtue.
“I love movies,” Gustin said in response to an audience member’s question about what prompted this presentation. “And as a Vermont historian, I started wondering if there was a way to connect the two.”
Clearly there was.
