The Southerner is the story of a poor family struggling to establish a cotton farm in Texas in the early 1940s. It was directed by Jean Renoir, who received an Oscar nomination and a National Board of Review award for his work, and was based on the novel Hold Autumn in Your Hand by George Sessions Perry, which won the first National Book Award in 1941.

Leonard Maltin gave this movie a perfect 4 stars, calling it a superb drama. That plus strong support from IMDb users pushed it near the top of the Internet Archive Top 100.