Raintree County (1957)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Edward Dmytryk

Writers:

Ross Lockridge Jr. (novel)
Millard Kaufman (screenplay)

Release Date:

20 December 1957 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

In The Great Tradition Of Civil War Romance

Plot:

A graduating poet/teacher falls in love with a Southern woman, and then the Civil War and her past create problems.

Plot Keywords:

Love | Beautiful Woman | Melodrama | Southern Belle | American Civil War

Awards:

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 3 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Montgomery Clift	...	John Wickliff Shawnessy
Elizabeth Taylor	...	Susanna Drake
Eva Marie Saint	...	Nell Gaither
Nigel Patrick	...	Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles
Lee Marvin	...	Orville 'Flash' Perkins
Rod Taylor	...	Garwood B. Jones
Agnes Moorehead	...	Ellen Shawnessy
Walter Abel	...	T.D. Shawnessy
Jarma Lewis	...	Barbara Drake
Tom Drake	...	Bobby Drake
Rhys Williams	...	Ezra Gray
Russell Collins	...	Niles Foster
DeForest Kelley	...	Southern officer

Runtime:

USA:168 min (original version) | 188 min (Turner Library Print) | Australia:160 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (Westrex Recording System) (70 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Danville, Kentucky, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

This film was the first to be photographed in the MGM Camera 65 process; the second was Ben-Hur (1959). Later, the process was renamed Ultra Panavision 70. It involved using a 65mm negative with the addition of lenses that applied a 1.25 X anamorphic squeeze. When projected, the aspect ratio would be 2.21:1 X 1.25 = 2.76:1. However, around 1957 theaters were still showing Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), which forced MGM to release this film only on 35mm anamorphic prints, with an aspect ratio of 2.55:1. MGM used the older CinemaScope format because it allowed for the inclusion of four-track magnetic audio, in contrast to the mono-only audio offered by 2.35:1 optical soundtrack prints.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: While celebrating Lincoln's election in 1860, the band can be heard playing "Rally Round the Flag". This song was not penned until 1862 by George F. Root.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime (2001) (V)

Soundtrack:

Raintree County

Susanna Drake is among Taylor's most colorful and intelligent characterizations…

Liz is a disturbed New Orleans belle with a vision that she's part black… She's the beautiful femme fatale to Eva Marie Saint's inevitable cowardly heroine… As in "A Place in the Sun," Liz is used as the symbol of a particular social class and a particular kind of woman… She sets her mark on an idealistic young man John Wickliff Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) who's looking for the mythical rain tree that contains the secret of the meaning of life…

Trapping him into marriage with the lie that she's pregnant, and then proceeding to lose her hold on her sanity, Susanna detains the good and helpless John for eight years… He is released, able to return to his magnificent dream and to his pure childhood sweetheart, only after tragic events…

Retaining the essence of Ross Lockridge, Jr. best-seller, the movie states the equality of the unhappy romance with the Civil War: the personal drama is therefore a reflection of the nation's wounds… According to the top-heavy symbolism, Susanna Drake represents the South, corrupting and dragging down the North; she's the Body contaminating the poet's Soul…

Taylor plays Susanna Drake's character with an intensity that exceeds all her earlier work… Montgomery Clift as the unlucky poet and Eva Marie Saint as his high school sweetheart and true love are on the remote side, but the scenes with Liz strike fire in a wonderfully brilliant way…

With its battles and its formal balls, its magnificent riverboats and decayed mansions, its bordellos and madhouses, its childbirth and deathbed scenes, and its evacuation of Atlanta, Edward Dmytryk's "Raintree County," like its source, has undeniable epic dimension…