The opening sequence alone makes us thank the eponymous deity for black-and-white. Anthony Mann's penchant for low-angle shots is well met in the Southern landscape where Ty Ty Walden (Robert Ryan) and his sons have been futilely digging for buried treasure for fifteen years. Now the land is a cross between No Man's Land and a Beckett set, acre after acre of giant holes where the family does pretty much everything but eat supper, waiting for gold, or for Godot. Mann and Philip Yordan adapted Erskine Caldwell's steamy novel with irreverent humor and casual indifference to the steam that got the novel banned in Boston. Sure, Tina Louise quit her role in Li'l Abner to play the smoldering Griselda, and Buddy Hackett visibly drools over Fay Spain's Darlin' Jill. But the film's ensemble acting is the real miracle, with Robert Ryan at the center as the simple, loving Ty Ty, dealmaker to the gods, and symbol of an atavistic strain that has America digging for gold instead of farming.