Product Details

• Actors: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Nigel Patrick, Lee Marvin
• Directors: Edward Dmytryk
• Producers: Davis Lewis
• Format: Color, Widescreen, Collector's Edition, Limited Edition, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: MGM/UA
• Run Time: 173.0 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0009Q9AV0
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #289,936 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Plot Summary for Raintree County (1957) Idealist John Wickliff Shawnessy (Montgomery Cliff) drifts away from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) and enters into a passionate, but loveless, marriage with Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor) a wealthy New Orleans belle. But John soon learns that Susanna's mother died in a lunatic asylum and it becomes apparent that Susanna has inherited her family's curse for she tricked him into marriage. Frustrated with life, John leaves home by enlisting in the Northern Army and fights in Tennessee and Georgia during the terrible and brutal Civil War where he does some soul searching for himself and explores his path in life to what may lay in store for him should he return home. Summary written by Matt Patay

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Short Review of a Long Movie, July 21, 2006

By 

David A. Kemp (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raintree County (General Release Version Deluxe Letter-Box Edition) (VHS Tape)

MGM evidently envisioned this three-hour 1957 would-be Civil War epic as a next-generation Gone With the Wind, but its hopes were misplaced: it's a grave disappointment. Taylor hams it up as a tempestuous, manipulative, neurotic Southern belle (a kind of overwrought parody of Scarlett O'Hara). Clift is stuck in the thankless role of bland straight man to whom things happen---whom other characters play off of. Saint is the true-blue hometown gal who loves Clift, gets jilted, but perseveres to land her man in the end. Marvin is a hard-drinking, two-fisted hellraiser. British old pro Nigel Patrick steals his scenes as a flamboyant, lecherous schoolmaster and provides welcome diversion. But he can't save this silly, ponderous, badly dated melodrama: the sophomoric dialogue hamstrings the actors and falls flat (some of it is laughable); none of the characters or situations carries any real conviction; the lumbering film just can't get off the ground. It has been aptly called "an elephantine bore," and does scant justice to Ross Lockridge's estimable 1948 historical novel on which it is based. (Lockridge committed suicide shortly after publishing this his only book; thus he was spared the indignity of witnessing the travesty Hollywood made of it.)

5.0 out of 5 stars Esoterically Enigmatic, July 15, 2007

By 

gobirds2 (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raintree County (General Release Version Deluxe Letter-Box Edition) (VHS Tape)

I like RAINTREE COUNTY. I rate it in my top 10 or 20 films. (If you rank films it often seems we need more space in our top 10 doesn't it?) Essentially the film seems magical for me. It is a somewhat offbeat and disturbing epic that seems to captivate the viewer. In one instance it demonstrates tried and true Hollywood conventional storytelling at its best. Yet at other times it goes off into a nether land of the mysterious wonderment of what the beautiful side of life holds for the passionate seeker of such exquisite bewilderment. And still yet it juxtaposes this quest for seeking the secret of such profound and beautiful emoluments of nature to a darker and mysterious side the human psyche that befuddles and hinders the quest and ability to appreciate these wonders. All this set against the backdrop of the Civil War the film seems to somehow mirror and metaphorically explain the complexities of the conflict without truly stating in strong visual terms the sentiments of the North and South. The Civil War was a conflict characterized initially as one of nobility to a cause, clouded by dreams of glory that eventually came to a realization that all the death and destruction and waste of human energies was neither noble and certainly was not characterized by ideals of glory or other such aspirations.

I suppose I could go on at length and talk about many of the esoterically interesting aspects of RAINTREE COUNTY but one scene really comes to mind and continues to captivate me. Late in the film during the Civil War sequence Lee Marvin gives one of the most wonderful lines in the film that sort of sums up the realization of what RAINTREE COUNTY really means. He yells out across to a band of rebels behind the thick brush, "I come from Raintree County." And then he speaks softly to himself in fond memory "I come from Raintree County." He has come full circle. The Raintree means many things to those that believe. This one tender moment of reflection by Marvin, "Flash" Perkins, affirms that. On a personal note Montgomery Clift's real life disfiguring accident during this film only heightens the enigmatic quality that this film holds. We truly don't know what could have been. We can only wonder and believe that something greater was at work on this production. Johnny Green's low-key emotionally fervent and almost unearthly score beckons the viewer to imagine greater things that can be only be inspired from some spiritual notions from the heavens. Both Elizabeth Taylor's and Eva Marie Saint's competition for Montgomery Clift's affections take second place to Clift's yearning for truth and understanding spurned by the expressive performance of Nigel Patrick as Professor, Jerusalem Webster Stiles, who has continually mystified Clift's yearning for life's answers. And so it happened long ago in RAINTREE COUNTY.

If you can, find the Roadshow Edition there are several more scenes that complete the narrative into a more cohesive film. However, this version on LaserDisc, which is Letterboxed, looks and sounds very good.