Pudd'nhead Wilson

Alan Bridge's 1983 Pudd'nhead Wilson, which originally aired on PBS's American Playhouse series, is apparently only the second film version of Mark Twain's final novel (the first was a 1916 silent picture). The most likely reason for the neglect is the plot: to prevent her son being sold, a slave mother switches her own light-skinned black baby with her master's white infant son (both were born on the same day, but the other mother died in childbirth), after which the black child grows up to become the heir to the estate—and a scalawag, thief, and murderer. Like Twain's more famous The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book can be misunderstood as racist rather than what it actually is: a bracing condemnation of slavery that serves as another fine example of the author's subversive genius. Ken Howard is amiable in the title role as an eccentric local lawyer whose fascination with the newfangled science of fingerprinting leads him to uncover the long-ago change of identities, and the film is blessed with a strong supporting cast, including the exceptional Lïse Hilboldt as the slave mother and a young Steven Weber as her wastrel son, who gets a terrible comeuppance. A fine adaptation of a lesser-known but marvelous work by an American icon, Pudd'nhead Wilson—which includes a DVD-ROM accessible study guide—is highly recommended. (F. Swietek)