Raintree County

Plot synopsis:
In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey (Montgomery Clift), a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) by Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor), a rich New Orleans girl. He has a brief and passionate affair with Susanna while she is visiting. Following her return to the South, she comes back to Indiana to tell Shawnessey she is pregnant with his child. John marries her out of honor and duty, leaving Nell heartbroken.
They move south to live with Susanna's family. He learns that Susanna's mother went insane and died in a suspicious fire, along with Susanna's father and a female slave implied as being the father's concubine. Susanna suspects that the slave may have been her biological mother. Gradually Susanna appears to be suffering from mental illness. She tells John that she faked pregnancy to trick him into marriage.
An abolitionist in the South, Shawnessey cannot fit in and they return to Freehaven in Raintree County before the outbreak of the Civil War. John works as a teacher and they have a child, Jimmy, born at the outbreak of the war. In the war's third year, Susanna develops severe paranoia and delusions. She flees Indiana with Jimmy and seeks refuge among her extended family in Georgia.
Shawnessey is determined to find her and recover his son. He enlists in the Union Army in hopes of encountering his wife and child. After fighting in terrible battles, he finds Jimmy at an old plantation and learns that Susanna has been placed in an insane asylum. He is wounded while carrying Jimmy back to Northern lines, and is discharged from the Union Army. Johnny searches for Susanna, finding her kept in terrible conditions at the asylum. He brings her back with him to Raintree County.
After the end of the war and President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Shawnessey considers his future. Nell urges him to run for political office. Recognizing that Nell and John still love each other, Susanna sacrifices herself and deludedly enters the nearby swamp in the middle of the night to find the legendary raintree. Four-year-old Jimmy follows her. The search party eventually finds her body. John and Nell find Jimmy asleep and carry him out of the swamp, failing to see the tall raintree glowing in the sunlight.

Tags: melodrama

Review:
"Raintree" had a $5 million budget, the highest of any American film up to that time, so it was up to Schary to solve problems on the set or behind the scenes before they happened.Schary left the meetings believing Clift was sincere in his desire to straighten up and behave himself.
Greater than his pain had been the fear that his career was over.Montgomery Clift returned to work on "Raintree County" knowing that the picture was no better than when he left.
He returned knowing that audiences would come to see it to play a ghoulish game: they would try to spot him "before" and "after." He returned to the production numbed and dulled by painkillers and alcohol.Despite his horrific ordeal, despite the liquor and the pills that eased his pain and enabled him to complete the picture, I still believe Montgomery Clift's performance of Johnny Shawnessy to be one of his best.Clift had an unusual voice and unorthodox phrasing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Idealistic Montgomery Clift (as John Shawnessy) is distracted by buxom Southern belle Elizabeth Taylor (as Susanna Drake), and marries her instead of pretty sweetheart Eva Marie Saint (as Nell Gaither).
Of course, Clift is on the winning side of the war - but, his personal search for happiness, in an Eden called "Raintree County", is a more difficult path to manage...Clearly, MGM was hoping for something approaching "Gone with the Wind" - and, they failed.
Viewing will require some degree of commitment, though; it's a long movie.Early in the filming, Clift left a visit with friends at Taylor's home, and drove his car into a telephone pole.
The eventual toll on his "looks" was mainly taken by a growing dependence on alcohol and painkillers.Taylor, who is credited with saving Clift's life, shows some of the sparkle that would quickly make her one of the best actresses in the business, especially during the film's second half.
And, Nat King Cole sings the Johnny Green title song, a minor hit, very sweetly.****** Raintree County (10/4/57) Edward Dmytryk ~ Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint.
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.
Not the costumes, the scenery, the pallid performances--the wooden behavior of Montgomery Clift--the syrupy Southern accent affected by Elizabeth Taylor--the pale performance of Eva Marie Saint.
And that end takes an excessively long time in coming without providing enough interesting plot ideas to keep one interested or even caring about the fate of these colorless characters.An awful bore--so bad that the only compliment I can give the film is its rich musical score by Johnny Green and the title tune which is sung by Nat King Cole with an attractive choral arrangement as backup.
It also lacked emotional intensity and the storyline was telegraphed far in advance, not what you would expect from Dmytryk, the director of `The Caine Mutiny'.I understand Montgomery Clift (John Shawnessy) had a disfiguring accident during filming and thus he can be forgiven for looking a bit wooden in some scenes.
Lee Marvin and Rod Taylor both have parts as eager young men (which they were at the time) and are reasonably convincing, and the British actor Nigel Patrick has a good turn as one of those charismatic/charlatan `professors' who seem to inhabit 19th century American literature.The civil war and the battle against slavery get some screentime here, but the underlying theme is Shawnessy's search for personal meaning, for the Raintree of life.
Ross Lockridge, the original author, a resident of Indiana where most of the movie is set (though not filmed), wrote this single best seller before committing suicide in 1948, and was thus not around to tell the filmmakers what he intended, but Dmytryk at least seemed to realize the story was a rather personal one.
This soap opera really sprawls over the years before and after the Civil War. Montgomery Clift is a quiet homegrown college graduate in mutual love with pretty young Eva Marie Saint.
His quest for perfection became an obsession, and while it proved a asset to his film work, it rendered disaster to his private life.It seems, according to Bosworth, the man was unhappy most of the time.It's downright weird watching Clift in "Raintree County," in which his pre- and post-facial surgery persona appears unexpectedly in juxtaposed scenes.
For example, he might leave a scene with "wife" Elizabeth Taylor with his pre-accident face, then seconds later he's there with "old sweetheart" Eva Marie Saint in his post-accident countenance.
That's exactly what proceeds to transpire in the movie.This film is long on intention and short on realization, at the same time having a production design, costuming and sets that are quite professionally executed.As for "Clift" as subject, it is "natural" material for a biopic, as much as if not more compelling than that of a "counterpart," Rock Hudson.
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.
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.
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 Raintree County in Indiana just before he onset of the war.
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.
Especially when dealing with the Civil War. I was born and raised in the South, but all my parents' relatives come from Indiana, so it was interesting to see a film centered in that part of the country.My biggest impression of this film is the beauty of the scenery, costumes, sets and the quality of the cinematography.
I found the sub-plot of the Professor wanting to pursue one of his young, but already married students, a little disturbing.In terms of the cast, Clift plays his part quite well - especially in light of the tragic accident that happened while filming.
I think a stand out performance is given by the bit part played by Lee Marvin as "Flash", the guy who challenges Clift to the race.I think perhaps the novel was just too big and complex to try to cut down to right the length for a movie, without harming the story or running too long.
Eva Marie Saint brings loveliness and dignity to a somewhat underwritten role, and the natural-born scene stealer Nigel Patrick (in a Golden Globe-nominated performance) is great fun as a school professor who is ahead of his time.
Considering the cast and that it is thought as having similarities with Gone With the Wind, Raintree County really did have potential to be a great film.
Raintree County is a wonderful-looking film, the photography has that epic sweep and the costumes and sets are sumptuous and colourful(just look at Elizabeth Taylor's gowns here).
Many people have savaged this film over the years, but like 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' I have to watch 'Raintree County' every time it is on TCM.Considering the tragic accident that happened to Cliff during the filming, I am always in wonder that director Edward Dmytryk was able to make a film that holds together so well.
It's always nice to know when costars actually get along during the filming, so that gives all three of their movies an added bonus since they were lifelong friends.Raintree County was intended to repeat the glory of Gone with the Wind, but it ended up being a huge disappointment when comparing it to one of the universal favorite films of all time.
Elizabeth Taylor was cast as the Scarlett O'Hara type, a shallow, flirtatious Southern belle, and Eva Marie Saint played the meek Melanie character.
The film is perhaps best remembered for the car accident that disfigured Clift's good looks and shortened his career and life.
Such things happen a lot with really good books that get hacked up for the movie- like Hemingway's "Farewell To Arms." Still, it tries hard to capture the symbolism of the raintree, and by the way, the swamp did exist in the 1860's, though now it is just rich Indiana farmland.I give the movie the best review I can: I watch it every time it is on (I first saw the film late at night, in black and white, on TV).
So, having rewatched it again, this time on TCM, I find that it's truly a fantastic movie...great actors, particularly Montgomery Clift who was seriously injured during its filming in an off-set automobile accident -- the resulting injuries serving to affect his remaining life in a negative way.
Raintree County (1957) *** (out of 4) Northerner John Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) is about to marry his sweetheart (Eva Marie Saint) and start his life as a teacher but he then meets Southern belle Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor) who tricks him into marriage.
Once Clift is tricked into marriage the film really begins to focus in on Taylor and her mental illness, which plays a rather big part in the movie but it's also rather sloppy in a few scenes including one after the war when she's in a mental hospital and is visited by Clift and then the next time we see her it's as if nothing had happened.
The start of the film eats up much of the nearly three-hour running time and with the majority of the story taking place pre-war you wonder if the second half took the cuts.
Montgomery Cliff plays the role as John Shawnessy who is a graduating student who is a poet and teacher in Raintree County and he has a sweetheart named Nell Gasther, (Eva Marie Saint) who grew up together.
When MGM filmed Raintree County it had high hopes that it would be a second Gone With The Wind.
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.
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 Saint plays the ultra-nice but rather bland sweetheart of Montgomery Clift when the movie begins.
The story opens in 1859, in rural Indiana, as John and Nell (Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint) are graduating from school.
Though they've been in love for years, John is bewitched by the beautiful newcomer, Susanna (Elizabeth Taylor), a high-strung and unstable young woman.This 1957 film is an obvious attempt to match the grandeur of "Gone With the Wind" and it fails miserably.
Raintree County (1957): Starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor, Nigel Patrick, Myrna Hansen, Lee Marvin, Agnes Moorehead, Jarma Lewis, John Eldredge, Rosalind Hayes, Isabel Cooley, Walter Abel, Tom Drake, Rhys Williams, Russell Collins, DeForest Kelley, Ruth Attaway, Don Burnett, Oliver Blake, Michael Dante, Michael Dugan, Jack Daly, Dorothy Granger, James Griffith, Stacy Harris, Frank Millss, Bill Walker, Milicent Patrick, Robert Stevenson, Eileen Stevens....Director Edward Dmytyk...Screenplay Millard Kaufman.Based on the once popular novel by Ross Lockbridge Jr, director Edward Dmytryk's 1957 film "Raintree County" was MGM's attempt to create a lush epic picture about the Civil War which would equal or rival David O.
Shot in beautiful Technicolor, shot on beautiful locations in Indiana, Louisiana and a few Civil War sites, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor and a cast of multiple, colorful characters, this film didn't stand a chance against the immortal success of "Gone With The Wind".
Both Clift and Taylor have good chemistry as the romantic pair who should, by the standards of the day, have nothing to do with each other; for one's from the North and the other from the South.Monty Clift portrays John Shawnessy, born in the enchanting Raintree County, a graduate and idealist/abolitionist with hopes of becoming a great writer.
Although upon graduation from Professor Jerusalem Webster's class in 1859, Jon hoped to marry his home-grown sweetheart Nel Gaither (Eva Marie Saint), along comes the new girl in town, a flirty and charming Louisiana-born Southern belle Susannah Drake (Liz Taylor) who steals John's heart.
I realize that Clift had a real-life trauma during the time of the movie's filming.
"Murder, My Sweet" director Edward Dmytryk's "Raintree County" is a tragic love story set against the American Civil War. Everything about this prestigious MGM production had tragedy attached to it.
Montgomery Clift plays Johnny, a sensitive school teacher in antebellum Indiana, Raintree County.
Johnny is in love with Nell (Eva Marie Saint) until southern belle Susanna (Liz Taylor) shows up to settle some estate matters.