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. Unfortunately, while it is as bad as some have said it to be it was one of those films with undeniably great things but missed the mark. 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). Johnny Green's score is hauntingly beautiful with a discordant quality in the darker parts(like the scene in the burnt-out mansion) and a welcome degree of orchestral schmaltz in the strings without over-powering in any way. The song sung by Nat King Cole is highly emotive and Cole gives it even more of an emotional quality. Elizabeth Taylor really does smoulder here and gives some of her finest screen work, giving a very unsympathetic character a good amount of colour. The supporting cast fare well too mostly, Lee Marvin and Neil Patrick especially who look as though they're thoroughly enjoying themselves and steal every scene they feature in. Rod Taylor is fine too. However, Montgomery Clift is too wooden and stoic and spends about half the film looking on edge, understandably admittedly though due to his near-death experience.
Eva Marie Saint had a very underwritten character and poor dialogue to work with but she doesn't succeed in bringing charm or colour to the role and instead comes across as bland and annoying. Agnes Moorhead is quite good but has very little to do considering her calibre. Raintree County is one of those films where it's beautiful and glossy on the surface but under it it's underwhelming. The script is rather leaden in flow with some very clumsy dialogue(especially Saint's and some of Taylor's, the more insane Taylor gets the more uncomfortably over-heated the film gets too). Few of the characters are interesting, Susanna is a colourful character but Nell is both grating and underwritten(like the other woman from hell but in an over-familiar way) and Johnny is even blander and too overly-idealistic, almost at times too perfect as well. The story could have done a much better job with the complex, ahead-of-its-time issues and themes- with better dialogue and characterisation-(Giant also had even more daring issues and themes and incorporated them much more compellingly) and crawls limply along with a particularly long-winded and dramatically passionless first 45 minutes and a lot of overlong padding throughout the film, making the already long length seem longer. This viewer does not have a problem with long lengths or slow pacing, films and TV series have worked with both, but it is highly dependent on how the quality of the writing is which was for me and a lot of others where Raintree County fell short. The direction is rich in spectacle but with not much enthusiasm elsewhere. In conclusion, wonderful-looking but dull, a case of (no meanness intended) the off-screen drama- Clift's car accident/near death experience- being more absorbing than the film itself. The masterpiece that is Gone With the Wind(as this has been compared to) Raintree County is not. 5/10 Bethany Cox
Eva Marie Saint had a very underwritten character and poor dialogue to work with but she doesn't succeed in bringing charm or colour to the role and instead comes across as bland and annoying. Agnes Moorhead is quite good but has very little to do considering her calibre. Raintree County is one of those films where it's beautiful and glossy on the surface but under it it's underwhelming. The script is rather leaden in flow with some very clumsy dialogue(especially Saint's and some of Taylor's, the more insane Taylor gets the more uncomfortably over-heated the film gets too). Few of the characters are interesting, Susanna is a colourful character but Nell is both grating and underwritten(like the other woman from hell but in an over-familiar way) and Johnny is even blander and too overly-idealistic, almost at times too perfect as well. The story could have done a much better job with the complex, ahead-of-its-time issues and themes- with better dialogue and characterisation-(Giant also had even more daring issues and themes and incorporated them much more compellingly) and crawls limply along with a particularly long-winded and dramatically passionless first 45 minutes and a lot of overlong padding throughout the film, making the already long length seem longer. This viewer does not have a problem with long lengths or slow pacing, films and TV series have worked with both, but it is highly dependent on how the quality of the writing is which was for me and a lot of others where Raintree County fell short. The direction is rich in spectacle but with not much enthusiasm elsewhere. In conclusion, wonderful-looking but dull, a case of (no meanness intended) the off-screen drama- Clift's car accident/near death experience- being more absorbing than the film itself. The masterpiece that is Gone With the Wind(as this has been compared to) Raintree County is not. 5/10 Bethany Cox