Raintree County (1957)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Nigel Patrick, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Agnes Moorehead, Walter Abel, Tom Drake, Jarma Lewis, Rhys Williams, Russell Collins.

MGM’s stupendously expensive, plodding, and amorphous epic, based on a national bestseller and set partly in the Antebellum South leading into the Civil War, desperately wants to be the next Gone with the Wind. Not bad for about an hour, but then Taylor’s delusional Southern belle starts to dominate (it’s not a bad performance, per se, but her character is both laughable and vile, so it’s unpleasant company to share even in small doses); moon-eyed romantic Clift even abandons sweetheart Saint to be with her, but the two lead actors and the script are unable to produce a single reason why he would do this, nor why he would then stick it out with her for the rocky years to follow (other than the fact that they’re both attractive people). Puzzling ambitions, abrupt changes in setting and demeanor, wayward dramatic disinterest, and inadvertent kitsch take over during the last two (very long) hours; it can be visually resplendent at times, but where’s the direction and discipline? Clift’s performance suffered from real-life issues (he was seriously injured in an auto accident mid-production, leaving one side of his face paralyzed), but he wasn’t all that compelling in the scenes shot beforehand. DeForest Kelley has a small role.

40/100