Raintree County

Year: 1957
Genre: Drama
Directed: Edward Dmytryk
Stars: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Nigel Patrick, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Agnes Moorehead, Walter Abel, Jarma Lewis, Tom Drake, Rhys Williams, Russell Collins, DeForest Kelley
Production: MGM

People keep asking me, often in a huff, "why do you think older films are automatically better than newer films". Indeed, nearly every older film I've reviewed gets at least a passing grade versus, the odd movie that I catch in theaters. I figure a good half of those are simply not worth your time no matter how much subconscious or unrealized buyers remorse you have. Yet such criticism I feel is unfounded based on the simple fact that most of the older films I've seen come highly recommended by critics and audiences old enough to remember them. I'm not going to say that all critically lauded or "important" films are great or even good, but when you're fishing from a stream known to have fish, you can't be surprised when catch a few prized trouts.

Sorry Ross Lockridge Jr. you died for nothing

In proving my point, Raintree County is exhibit A when it comes to crappy films made before your parents were old enough to vote. At nearly three hours, this Civil War era drama is as overwrought, underwhelming and bloated as this year's DC Extended Universe flicks. While trying to be that generation's Gone with the Wind (1939), the film only succeeds in sabotaging the legacy of the book it's based off of. I caught this film while watching TCM and in keeping with the analogy of the opening paragraph, I wish I had thrown it back.

Raintree County is the story of an idealistic school teacher (Clift) and his decade long romance with high school sweetheart, Susanna a mentally unstable southern belle played by Elizabeth Taylor in full Mommie Dearest (1981) mode. Bred from a well-to-do family in the plantation south, Susanna can't help but fall in love with Clift's rather plain John Shawnessy and shuttles up to Rain Tree County in Indiana just before he onset of the war. Feeling displaced, she leaves with their son in tow to stay with her family in Georgia. The war starts, John joins the Union Army to find his family, Susanna is institutionalized, someone gets cancer, the butler did it and the dog saves the day. Okay those last three things don't really happen but that's the kind of molasses thick melodrama you can expect from this musty relic.

Yes, I know it was Joan Crawford not Elizabeth Taylor, Chill!

As a historical figure director Edward Dmytryk is infamous for being one of the Hollywood Ten that refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare. As a director however, he reached his professional high-point with The Caine Mutiny (1954) which had the same languid sepia feel that feels like the film negatives were drenched in urine. Camera-wise Raintree is ham-fisted and full of the same sweeping brush strokes that made Gone with the Wind so iconic. Yet in the hands of Dmytryk and veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees, it just feels like a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy.

Elizabeth Taylor does a commendable job hanging on to the little human bits that keep Susanna just north of realistic. Yet when we get to the final act it becomes obvious that her performance is playing to the cheap seats for Oscar glory. Montgomery Clift is as dead as a door nail in this lugubrious mess and Lee Marvin's portrayal as John's friend Flash is one-note and broad. The only real stand out really is Nigel Patrick whose roguish school master seems to have come out of a Neil Simon play just to slap the cardboard around.

Raintree County is a perfect example of an old film that should be forgotten despite its caliber as Oscar-bait before there was such a thing. It's listless, boring, over-broad, airless and unfocused. It's as if someone took an old-timey hot air balloon and made it a movie. Sure it glistens in the sunlight thanks to it's costume jewelry encrusted moorings but it's also painfully slow and not worth looking at for too long.

Final Grade: F