Raintree County (1957)

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:

Southern Belle | American Civil War | Love | Melodrama | Based On Novel

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:

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

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:

On May 12, 1956, during the shooting of this film, Montgomery Clift had a bad car accident on his way back home from a party at the house of Elizabeth Taylor. His friend Kevin McCarthy witnessed the accident from his car, drove back and informed Taylor and her then husband Michael Wilding, who immediately drove to the location together with Rock Hudson. Taylor entered the car through the back door, crawled to the front seat and removed the two front teeth from Clift's throat that threatened to choke him. Hudson finally managed to pull him out of the wreck and together they protected him from being photographed until the ambulance arrived. This was necessary because soon after the emergency call had come in to the local police station, reporters were already on their way and arrived at the scene when Clift was still in the car. The accident was well publicized. After nine weeks of recovery Clift returned to the movie set and finished the film, but with considerable difficulties. His dashing looks, though, were gone forever. The left side of his face was more or less immobile.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: After Lincoln's 1860 election, the crowd sings "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". However, Julia Ward Howe wrote the poem, on which the song was based, for the Atlantic Monthly in 1861.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Making Love (1982)

Soundtrack:

Never Till Now

Luxurious parts = lumpen whole.

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.