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Raintree County (1957)

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35 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
He Married Scarlett O'Hara and Wound up with Blanche Dubois, 6 mayo 2005

Author: bkoganbing de Buffalo, New York

When MGM filmed Raintree County it had high hopes that it would be a second Gone With The Wind. It didn't quite come up to that, but it is still a good film on its own merits.

It took about 10 years for MGM to finally bring this to the screen. Shortly before the tragic suicide of author Ross Lockridge, MGM acquired the screen rights to this one and only novel by Lockridge which was a number one best seller in post World War II years.

The story opens in ante bellum Civil War Indiana, specifically in RaintreeCounty. Our hero is John Shawnessy, a sort of aimless young man who teaches school for lack of better direction. He's a sensitive soul with deep abolitionist convictions and no one was a more sensitive soul on the screen than Montgomery Clift.

If all had gone well, Monty would have probably married the girl from home played by Eva Marie Saint. But a visiting Southern belle played by Elizabeth Taylor in her best fiddle-dee-dee Scarlett O'Hara manner sweeps Monty off his feet. He hasn't got a prayer.

But Liz Taylor got her first Academy Award nomination not for simply imitating Scarlett O'Hara. Her role requires her to descend into the madness of Vivien Leigh's other Southern belle Oscar part, Blanche Dubois. It's on this devolution of character that Liz Taylor the actress really shines. She lost the Oscar sweepstakes that year to Joanne Woodward's Three Faces of Eve.

The film almost wasn't finished because of a horrible automobile accident that nearly killed Monty Clift during production. As it was, it was held up for three months while the best plastic surgeons looked to reconstruct Montgomery Clift's face. You can see clearly those shots before and after the accident.

Liz Taylor in her documentary tribute to her favorite leading man and best friend in the world said that Monty Clift did not lose the physical beauty, but he did lose the delicacy of his features which were her own words. In a strange way it probably helped his performance because John Shawnessy does go to war and war is an experience known for scarring and aging people.

As in A Place In the Sun, Monty and Liz's scenes together have that extra dimension that people who care about each other deeply can give a scene. Raintree County should be seen for that alone.

Eva Marie Saint as the good girl from home does all right, but her character just doesn't have the depth that Liz's and Monty's do. Eva Marie is just given less to work with. Others in this nicely rounded cast are Lee Marvin as Clift's friend and rival from his hometown, Agnes Moorehead and Walter Abel as Clift's parents, Rod Taylor as a sleazy politician and Nigel Patrick who observes it all as a wandering reprobate who takes a liking to Clift.

It's not Gone With the Wind, but it's pretty good.

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30 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
sumptuous and nostalgic, 22 julio 2003
Author: IRVIN8 de st. monica

An individual's life is formed by his memories. Books, music and - yes, movies - influence us. We remember the situations and the dialogue, we remember the sweet melodies. These memories enable us to react, as well as give us the ability to identify situations as they occur.

I saw "Raintree County" when I was 15. Orphaned at six, I'd just departed from an orphans home in Dallas, after nearly nine years. Knowing virtually nothing of the outside world, I was receptive to everything, every person that I encountered. That summer of 1958, I sneaked into the Forest Park Drive-In to see Elizabeth Taylor, of whom I knew little, other than that she was a breath-taking beauty, and had been recently widowed when Michael Todd's chartered plane had crashed.

The characters in the movie (when I was 15) were literal, if not visceral: the magnificence of Miss Taylor's satin gowns encased over crinoline, Lee Marvin's sharp, smart-alecky wit, the professor's lechery, Montgomery Clift's Yankee stoicism, Agnes Moorehead's curious detachment, were all primary colors.

Forty-five years have passed. Those primary colors are now a multitude of blendings and shadings of secondary colors. Montgomery Clift's character is now a beautifully controlled young man who reflects his parents' stoicism, a young man whose intelligence and self control are at the core of the film, and upon whom all characters revolve.

Originally, I thought that "Raintree County" was strictly Taylor's vehicle. She is the burr under the saddle, the exquisite seductress that interfers with Clift's heretofore regulated, almost predestined lifestyle upon his college graduation.

'Raintree' is an achingly beautiful film, and Miss Taylor, who is the most gifted in her portrayal of anguished characters, blesses the movie. Norma Shearer could be beautiful in 'Marie Antoinette", but she lacked depth. Betty Davis portrayed Sturm und Drang, but was never a clothes horse. Taylor combines the two.

Having read some of the other's comments, most of whom disliked the story, perhaps it helps to be Southern to truly love this film. And also, one wants to realize that it depicts two diametrically opposed cultures: North and South. When Northern chill mixes with Southern humidity, chaos results. And so it did, and it was known as The War Between the States.

In conclusion, one wants to luxuriate in this film: Lockridge wrote a brilliant story, and for the most part, it is well delivered. It is rich in history and characterization.

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24 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
A Beautiful Evocation of the North During the Civil War, and More, 16 junio 2005

Author: silverscreen888 de United States

I discovered Ross Lockridge Jr.'s attempt at the Great American Novel when I first saw "Raintree County" the film in 1957. I was aware that the story that was put on the screen was not perfect, although it is a beautifully-made and often-interesting film; so I read the novel, to discover what had been omitted. Because I have become an expert on both the book and the film, I appreciate even more what is right about cinematic achievement and find myself more willing to ignore the story's flaws. First, consider the direction, a near-miracle of taste, shot composition, blocking and work with actors achieved by Edward Dmytryk. Art direction, lighting, set design, Walter Plunkett's costumes, the low-key music by Johnny Greene, the theme song, the dialogue by Millard Kaufman, and some of the acting rate with Hollywood's finest. In particular, Eva Marie Saint's work as Nell Gaither, Nigel Patrick as Professor Stiles, Walter Abel as T.D. and Lee Marvin as Flash Perkins deserved Oscar nominations. The smaller parts in the film, from James Griffiths to De Forest Kelley to Tom Drake are all well-nigh flawless. And the memorable scenes such as the Southern ball, the visit to a bordello, the great July Fourth race, Johnny's misadventure in the swamp, the scenes on the Academy lawn, the handling of Johnny Shawnessey's house in Freehaven, Indiana, the war scenes, the great rally in 1860, Rod Taylor's office as Garwood Jones in Indianapolis, all are very well mounted. The flaw in the script, which has a story much-altered from the novel that has one philosophical error also (the author cannot accept American individualism as being not social but reality-based) was confirmed for me by Eva Marie Saint. In 1966, I complimented her acting then asked if the story might not have been handled more strongly, to reflect the novel. Sadly, she noted, "Oh no--they GAVE the picture to ELIZABETH!". A multi-million-dollar film had been made to wangle an undeserved nomination for an Academy Award for Elizabeth Taylor, who tries hard but lacks the classical dimension. But, there is a way to enjoy this superbly-made film that renders the problem of Johnny Shawnessey's obsession with the Taylor character smaller: watch it in 'thirds'. The film then becomes Young John Shawnessey; Johnny and Susannah Drake; Aftermath. It was shown this way on a Los Angeles TV station once, and the structure became much more evident. As the central character, Montgomery Clift starts well but the accident he had during the film and his miscasting vitiate some later work; he gets by with most of his very-demanding role, however, and his work in the last third of the film has some real power. I would not have missed this film for anything; it has been part of my life for fifty years; why not make its power, haunting successful scenes and many lovely attainments a part of yours also.

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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
GWTW it's not, 20 julio 2002
Author: (burgbob975@aol.com) de san francisco bay area

Raintree County, MGM's attempt to make a picture that would faintly remind audiences of Gone With the Wind, did have two things in common with the earlier film: Technicolor and length. Otherwise, it was a disaster, a clichéd period piece heavy on costumes, very light on absorbing human situations.

Raintree had two insurmountable problems: ham-handed direction and a clumsy, uninspired script that failed to flesh out the characters of several cast members including two leading players. Worst impacted was Monty Clift as Johnny Shawnessy, a role so bland that it offered the actor nothing to grab hold of. Johnny is simply a nice person, honorable, loyal, patient, and truthful. He is someone of good values, a person to rely on, occasionally funny in an adolescent sort of way, and a good son to his boring two-dimensional parents. (Correction. Agnes Moorhead as Johnny's mother is one dimensional. The script's fault, not hers.) In short, there's nothing interesting about Johnny. He's ordinary. Apparently, studio executives didn't see a problem with this, even though Johnny Shawnessy is continuously front and center in a film that originally ran for almost three hours, as it does again in the restored video version.

Clift, one of the most gifted American film actors of the twentieth century, knew he was prostituting himself by appearing in Raintree. He responded by delivering what is arguably the worst performance of his career. It's painful to watch him: in most of his scenes he appears pallid, slightly dwarfish, and insignificant, giving the impression that he was privately making believe he really wasn't in the film at all.

The first excruciating hour of the picture is almost enough to drive audiences out of the theater. Since GWTW was long, Raintree County is long--and unfocused. In one particularly vapid scene Monty and Eva Marie Saint linger amid the widescreen splendor of well-scouted, photographically appropriate locations. As the two exchange graduation presents with Laurel and Hardy-like formality, the script calls for Eva Marie to coyly break into girlish giggles and say things like `Isn't that niiieeccce?...We think the same things. Isn't that crazy? Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee.' Privately, Eva Marie must have been wondering what crime she might have committed to have caused fate to whirl her from the triumph of her 1954 performance in On the Waterfront to this swampy mess.

The film is equally inept in making use of Lee Marvin, who was reduced to doing his loutish, clumsy, I'm-so-dumb schtick. Marvin wasn't nearly as good at broad physical comedy as he and some others seemed to think he was. (Doing more subtle comedy, however, where less is more, was another thing altogether for Marvin. Watch him as a clueless wannabe in a wonderful film like Pocket Money to see what he can do with a great comic role.) We watch as Lee challenges Monty first to a race (lots of grotesquely exaggerated, manly calisthenics at the starting line), then to see who can out-drink the other, while a dozen equally buffoonish male extras shout and yell on cue. Johnny, a guileless innocent, gets thoroughly looped for the first time in his life, whoops it up, and executes a flying swan dive into a bunch of liquor barrels. (In real life, Monty was a little less innocent than Johnny Shawnessy; according to his biographers, he was a walking all-nite pharmacy of illicit substances.)

To give credit where it's due, the film is briefly buoyed by the presence of the wonderful Nigel Patrick as a roguish schoolmaster with an eye for other men's wives. Happily for us, Patrick steals all of his scenes, impatiently bellowing at or comically insulting his young charges and generally pumping some desperately needed fire and energy into the film.

After a very long time, something of major interest finally occurs: Elizabeth Taylor makes her entrance. Sexy, conniving, dark-eyed Liz steals Johnny away from poor, decent Eva Marie and soon hornswoggles him into marrying her by falsely claiming to be pregnant. While on their honeymoon aboard a paddlewheeler, she nonchalantly arranges a dozen dolls on their bed and shows Monty her all-time favorite, a hideous half-white, half-black doll, appearing burnt in a fire and looking like it was designed by Bela Lugosi. This creepy figurine seemingly makes no impression on Monty, even as members of the audience are rearing back in horror, crossing themselves, and yelling `Monty! Watch out!!'

Taylor delivers a solid performance that displays the rising talent that she had already shown a few years before in A Place in the Sun and which would later would come to fruition in such films as Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and Giant. As Susanna Drake, she is initially sexually beguiling towards Johnny. Then, after they marry, she begins to show the first signs of the madness within her. As the atmosphere around her grows slowly darker, you find yourself surprised to realize you're at last being drawn into the story. The actress took a gamble with this unsympathetic role, that of a southern-born woman who fails to see anything wrong with owning slaves and is terrified of possibly finding that she might have a single drop of `negra' blood in her veins. At the same time she manages to elicit a measure of sympathy for this narrow and unbalanced woman by displaying a touching vulnerability simultaneously with her fear of what's happening to her mind.

If anyone triumphs in this upholstered turkey, it's Liz Taylor, always a born survivor.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Not nearly as bad as has been said over the years, 15 febrero 2005

Author: jackhutchinson de United States

I have always loved this film, mainly because of the hauntingly beautiful score by Johnny Green. For too long "Raintree County" has been compared with "Gone with the Wind". The whole story and concept is very different. I agree with another poster here that Liz Taylor is marvelous in this, playing out her mental illness. How very sad that Monty Clift died so young. There was so much potential in him for older male roles of character years later. Maybe there will be a time when gay actors won't live quiet lives of desperate misery in fear of losing their careers. Also I think the cinematography is quite rich. Perhaps the late MGM work is not all that great but this one is hardly as terrible as so many film critics and historians have told us over the years since it was made in 1957.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Restored 190 minute version the one to own, 18 enero 2000

Author: Arne Andersen (aandersen@landmarkcollege.org) de Putney, VT

The newly restored version of RAINTREE COUNTY contains a short studio-created documentary on its filming, the original wide screen trailer and wide-screen renderings of the main title, the restored overture, intermission screen, and entr'acte - and yet runs the film itself in conventional tv screen dimensions (go figure !!!). None of the fifteen restored minutes is of any added value (scenes that follow these are somewhat illuminated by the footage but one has all the information one needs to understand the scene without what went before). Oddly enough it is obvious even to those who don't know the general release print by heart when the insertions occur - the film changes its look from bright and colorful to grainy, washed out and somewhat out of focus (So the wizards couldn't be bothered to restore the missing footage to the same pristine effect as the previously released footage?). The scenes with Clift that are pre-disfiguring accident are obvious here: a: scene with parents in kitchen; b: street scene with Marvin and early race attempt; c: with Taylor in the photo parlor; d: the race itself; e: the confession scene. Watch the face itself and listen to the voice - the wide smile is no longer possible after the surgery and the voice is constricted and tending towards a mumble, possibly due to the pain medication he was taking at the time. For the record - restored scenes: Cornfield scene; Father's illegitimacy confession; Drake's attack on negro slave; Clift and paper editor re job; childbirth sequence; scenes in Indianapolis looking for Taylor (including Rod Taylor/photographer); discussion of politics with Rod Taylor and Patrick; Taylor gathering of dolls in attic. One is struck by the marvelous supporting work of Nigel Patrick - I still think he deserved an Oscar nom for this performance. Elizabeth Taylor is still impressive in her first Oscar nominated role. Clift seems wooden. The Oscar-nominated sets, costumes and score still seem worthy. Note that the age of the child as cast is anachronistic - the war would have already been over by the time it starts in the film.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Typical late MGM, trying to recapture past glory, 20 agosto 1999
Author: ripper2 de New Hope, PA, USA

It takes forever for the Civil War to begin, but this expensive, massively scaled MGM adaptation and bowdlerization of Ross Lockridge's now-forgotten best seller is moderately entertaining. Elizabeth Taylor, stunning in lushly detailed period costumes, has some fine moments of hysteria, a good warm-up to the meatier roles she starred in the 60's. Montgomery Clift holds his own against the melodramatic machinations of the plot and, as always, he looks great paired with Taylor. Agnes Moorehead is miscast, as she so often was during her film career, but the rest of the players come through nicely.

The film lacks the detailed historical touches that enrich "Gone With the Wind", so which it has often been compared. There are a few howling anachronisms (the interiors, particularly, reflect 1950's Decorator Dreams of home decor) and, in the usual MGM style, everyone is ludicrously over-dressed. The outdoor location shooting is refreshing, however. The scene where Taylor and Clift visit the burned-out ruins of her childhood home is particularly striking (the actual ruins of Windsor, a Mississippi plantation house, where used for the shot).

Director Edward Dmytryk keeps things moving along, and the score by Johnny Green is a nice additon, though Johnny Mathis' title ballad is an odd disappointment.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Luxurious parts = lumpen whole., 26 mayo 2003
Author: Greg Couture de Portland, Oregon

M-G-M assigned some pretty heavy-hitters to cobble together this almost indigestible attempt to tell a Civil War story without a producer like David O. Selznick to insist that the whole thing should somehow come together. Other comments on this site tell the sad story of miscasting, a seemingly unfocused script, apparently disinterested direction and the obvious tragedy of Montgomery Clift's catastrophic automobile accident during production and its effect on all the performances he was to give thereafter.

Elizabeth Taylor is about the only central player who emerges relatively unscathed and her Academy Award nomination was deserved (and certainly more worthy of the Oscar she did win for "BUtterfield 8".)

I bought reserved seat tickets for this before its initial engagement began and the reviewers' generally negative appraisals were available. M-G-M's new big screen process, MGM Camera 65 ("Window of the World" as they termed it, used only once again by the studio for "Ben-Hur"), afforded a handsome showcasing of all the expense lavished upon this production, but, even as a teenager, I squirmed in my seat as its oh-so-lengthy reels unspooled and I left the theater regretting that its makers hadn't somehow achieved something memorable for its quality and dramatic impact, rather than for its longueurs. Johnny Green's score (and Nat King Cole's rendition of the title song) did sound awfully good over the stereophonic sound system at that Beverly Hills, California theater and that's one aspect of this disappointment that is now probably lost forever.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Civil War-era scandals and family skeletons..., 24 julio 2006

Author: moonspinner55 de redlands, ca

Sprawling MGM production (the studio's attempt to outdo their own "Gone With the Wind"), based on Ross Lockridge Jr.'s book and featuring Elizabeth Taylor as a southern belle haunted by a family trauma. Montgomery Clift plays an Indiana schoolteacher who chances to meets belle Taylor in his beloved Raintree County, leading to a pre-marital affair (and pregnancy); they marry, but he finds living in her neck of the woods undesirable, and she's not welcomed graciously among the Yankees. The Civil War works as a catalyst to bring the two together, where Clift finds his passion for politics coming to the fore. Eva Marie Saint plays an unmarried, moral girl who loves Monty despite his mistakes, Lee Marvin is a tough rowdy who takes on all comers, Rod Taylor plays a political snake, and so on. The story is engrossing, occasionally over-heated and over-zealous, but seldom dull. Still, Taylor, despite getting an Oscar nod for Best Actress, disappears for a long stretch of the proceedings--and this isn't an attractive role for her anyway (she gets to play the insane bit, but it's a groaner). The movie really belongs to Clift, and his performance in the first hour is quite strong (an off-the-set car accident causes his acting in the second-half to be a bit timid). Far too long and predictable, "Raintree County" still isn't bad, with terrific cinematography by Robert Surtees and a sumptuous, Oscar-nominated background score by Johnny Green. **1/2 from ****

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
With all that money and gloss, a surprisingly bland and uninvolving flick, 20 agosto 2006

Author: planktonrules de Bradenton, Florida

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Considering the budget and big name actors involved, this movie is a big disappointment. After all, with these ingredients and the hope of MGM execs that this would repeat the success of GONE WITH THE WIND, the movie came up surprisingly short. Sure, the story is set in the same time period, though mostly in the North, but somehow sparks just never fly. Most of this, it seems, is because none of the characters or what happens to them are very interesting and the audience is left feeling little connection with them. Now this isn't to say it's a bad film, just a pretty average time-passer--a very, very, very long time passer!

Eva Marie Saint plays the ultra-nice but rather bland sweetheart of Montgomery Clift when the movie begins. They had apparently been sweet on each other for some time and it looks as if they will eventually marry,...that is, until pretty and vivacious Liz Taylor comes to town and throws herself at Clift. Considering that Ms. Saint's character is never allowed to develop into anything other than a lady who pines for Monty, I could see why Clift ultimately fell for Taylor in the story. Saint's character just was way under-written--needing to be hashed out into a three-dimensional person instead of a rather broad and pathetic character who inexplicably hung around for the whole movie.

Now as for Clift, he, too, was a bit bland. While he had much more depth than Ms. Saint, much of the movie he just reacted to events instead of being a man of action. For example, he never actually asked Liz to marry him until she told him she was pregnant, he was an abolitionist but never really said of did anything about this until the war was about to begin--even though his wife brought a couple slaves with her when they first got married, he didn't enter the war until it was half over and his wife disappeared into the South with their son, and he wanted to go into politics at the end of the film but wouldn't commit since he felt an obligation to stay and take care of his mentally ill wife--at which point the wife killed herself because she knew he wouldn't do anything about politics until she was dead. What a total wimp--a very, very far cry from Rhett Butler or even Namby-pamby Ashley Wilkes!! As for Liz Taylor, she was the only one of the main characters with any depth or interesting back story. The problem, though, is that her character was histrionic and became progressively more and more mentally ill as the story went--but that alone was the only depth given to her character.

So, we are left to conclude that the story involves pretty dull and uninvolving people. And, considering that much of it occurs during the Civil War, it is amazingly turgid and slow. There are so many better and more interesting epic films or films about the war. This one just seems like it has a lot of style but absolutely no substance. This is the rare case where I really thought the movie could stand to have at least 25% of the film edited out to make for a tighter and more watchable film.

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