| Raintree County | |
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Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Edward Dmytryk |
| Produced by | David Lewis |
| Written by | Millard Kaufman |
| Based on | novel by Ross Lockridge, Jr. |
| Starring | Montgomery Clift Elizabeth Taylor Eva Marie Saint Lee Marvin Rod Taylor |
| Music by | Johnny Green |
| Cinematography | Robert Surtees |
| Editing by | John D. Dunning |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) |
| Release date(s) | December 20, 1957 |
| Running time | 182 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5,474,000[1] |
| Box office | $9 million[2] |
Raintree County is a 1957 Technicolor film drama about the American Civil War. It was directed by Edward Dmytryk.[3][4] The film stars Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, and Lee Marvin.
It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Ross Lockridge, Jr. In the credits for the film, the author's name is misspelled as Ross Rockridge Jr.
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Raintree County was shot at various locations, including Dunleith, an antebellum mansion, Windsor Ruins, in Natchez, Mississippi, Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee near the Kentucky border [5], and two locations in Kentucky, one of which was at the Liberty Hall Historic Site on Wilkinson Street in Frankfort and the other in and around Danville.
During filming, Montgomery Clift had an automobile accident which almost killed him. After several weeks of recovery, he returned to finish the film, but the left side of his face had been partially paralyzed.
At the time, the film was the most expensive US-based film in MGM's history. It was a success at the box office but did not recoup its cost.[6]
Idealist John Wickliff Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift), a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) by a young rich New Orleans girl, Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor). He has a brief and passionate affair with Susanna while she is visiting in Raintree County. She returns to the South, but suddenly reappears to reveal that she is pregnant. John quickly marries her out of honor and duty, and Nell is heartbroken.
John and Susanna initially live in the South with Susanna's family. John is an abolitionist and does not fit well into southern society. He learns that Susanna's mother went insane and died in a suspicious fire, along with Susanna's father and a female slave who was intimated to be his lover. Susanna suspects that the slave may even have been her biological mother. It becomes apparent that Susanna has inherited her family's curse of mental illness. She reveals to John that she feigned pregnancy to trick him into marriage.
John and Susanna return to Freehaven in Raintree County Indiana before the outbreak of the Civil War, where John works as a teacher. They eventually have a child, Jimmy, born at the outbreak of the American Civil War. Into the third year of the Civil War, Susanna develops severe paranoia and delusions. She flees Indiana, taking their young son, Jimmy, with her and seeks refuge among her family in the South.
John becomes determined to find her and his son, Jimmy, and enlists in the Union Army, in hopes that he will cross paths with Susanna and Jimmy. He fights in Tennessee and Georgia, and he eventually finds Jimmy and learns that Susanna has been placed in an insane asylum. He is wounded while carrying Jimmy back to Northern lines and then is discharged from the Union Army. John searches for Susanna, finds her in dreadful circumstances in a lunatic asylum and returns with her to Raintree County.
News reaches Raintree County that the South has surrendered, and shortly thereafter that Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. John contemplates his future, and Nell urges him to run for political office. Susanna recognizes that John and Nell still love each other deeply, and she decides to sacrifice herself to make way for John to pursue his career and consummate his love with Nell. She runs into the nearby swamp in the middle of the night to drown herself. Her four-year old son follows her. The search party eventually finds her body, and John and Nell find Jimmy lying asleep at the foot of the legendary Rain Tree of Raintree County. (All of this is told in the context of the Johnny Appleseed legend of the Rain Tree.)
Elizabeth Taylor was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (William A. Horning, Urie McCleary, Edwin B. Willis, Hugh Hunt), Best Costume Design and Best Music, Scoring. [7] The film was shot in a 65 millimeter widescreen process called MGM Camera 65, which was also used for MGM's 1959 version of Ben Hur.
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