As part of underground auteur Nicholas Winding Refn’s restoration series, Joseph L. Anderson’s low-rent 1967 hicksploitation classic has its second wind in a marketplace that’s perhaps more amenable to its rural misery now that downer bucolic blue-collar dramas like Winter’s Bone (2010) and Frozen River (2008) have gained comfy mainstream acceptance. Shot on location in Canaan, Ohio, for what was pocket change even in the mid-60s ($29,000), Spring Night, Summer Night benefits from Anderson’s economical use of its cast of nonprofessional actors, adding to the film’s immersive realism. The story ostensibly centers on Jessica (Larue Hall), the oldest daughter of WWII veteran and now poor farmer Virgil (John Crawford), who falls pregnant by her half-brother Carl (Ted Heim), although the two keep this development a secret for fear of the obvious repercussions from family and an unforgivingly gossip-hungry small town. Such a quasi-incestuous scenario would seem fodder for the sort of hillbilly baiting of a Tennessee Williams or Erskine Caldwell, where uncivilized bumpkin behavior is rendered onscreen with an air of carnivalesque contempt. But Anderson’s surprisingly sympathetic direction never dehumanizes these characters and patiently withholds any sort of heavy-handed moralistic judgment. Mostly Spring Night is a fascinatingly bleak portrait of a town that’s seen prosperity pass fleetingly by and where the social advancements of the late 1960s are hardly discernible. The men drink, fight, and carouse on the weekends in sweaty bars to the sounds of Appalachian music, and the women clean up the mess afterward. Melancholic young men like Carl talk about the military as the only chance they’ll ever have to be economically viable. It’s also a place where rumor-spreading townsfolk are trusted as the local arbiters of truth, even more than one’s own family. This is why Jessica’s final decision to keep her dubiously conceived child, and raise it on her own feels like such a quietly heroic feminist moment—coming in a time and place where such empowering moments are achingly few and far between. Recommended. (M. Sandlin)