Trailer
Plot summary
In Vine Hill, Tennessee, in the years after the Civil War, Laurel Sommersby keeps the family farm going while her husband Jack is gone. Jack was an unpleasant, abusive man, and neighbor Orin Meacham has been helping with the farmwork and expects to marry her. Then a man claiming to be Jack arrives, gentle with Laurel and with their son, Rob. The land is mortgaged and the local economy is ruined, so Jack persuades the townspeople to pool their money for a Burley tobacco crop on his land, and offers the freedmen who work it the chance to buy plots of their own. Some in Vine Hill resent the offer, and some doubt he is Jack at all.
Cast
- Wendell Wellmanas Travis
- Brett Kelleyas Little Rob
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sommersby (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's identity-swap theme was reused in the 1997 Simpsons episode "The Principal and the Pauper", whose working title, "Skinnersby", was a reference to Sommersby.
- The story is taken from the French film The Return of Martin Guerre, which was itself based on the true story of a real man, Martin Guerre.
