IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

jarrodmcdonald-1 Last night I came across a disc I had called 'Natural Disasters.' One film was THE RAINS CAME, and another one was THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR.As I watched these films, I read user reviews on the IMDb and various message board comments about both the original, starring Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy and George Brent, plus the remake with Richard Burton, Lana Turner and Fred MacMurray. The Power version currently has an overall user rating of 7.0, whereas the Burton version has a 5.9. I disagree with those scores. I personally rated the Power showcase a 6, and the Burton effort a 9. In the following paragraphs, I will explain my reasons.First, it is more than the casting, though the casting and quality of acting does matter quite a bit. I have never been a fan of Tyrone Power's acting, and while I don't entirely dislike his work, it certainly pales by comparison with the level of excellence Richard Burton brings to the screen in any role. Probably a real Indian actor should have been cast, and in my view, this property is ripe for another remake so they can get that part right. In the 1955 offering, which is in Technicolor, we see that Burton is more like a Welshman with a tan-- almost implying the character is a half-breed, not a full-blooded Indian. If Fox was going to 'go there' with the interracial storyline more than in the first production, they couldn't make him too dark, I suppose. Continuing with the acting, I think Lana Turner is much better (though slightly miscast) as Lady Edwina. Why do I say this? Well, Myrna Loy definitely comes across as a lady, and Lana does seem by comparison to have the morals of gutter trash in this story-- but Lana oozes a lot more passion. We get the feeling she is rather desperate for real and lasting love, believing Dr. Safti can give it to her. Myrna just seems too put together emotionally and a little too brittle to be affected this way. Also, when the conflicts come to the surface between Edwina and the Maharani, we can see the Indian woman's points more clearly in the remake that maybe Edwina is poison for Dr. Softi. Also, I tend to like the secondary love story performers better in the remake. Fred MacMurray does a convincing job as a self-loathing drunk, and when he reaches redemption later in the story, his tenderness towards Joan Caulfield seems a lot more realistic. Like they are equals despite the age difference. I felt like MacMurray was probably tapping into his own redeeming relationship with his younger wife June Haver when he played those scenes. In the other picture, George Brent just comes across smarmy and he still treats Brenda Joyce like a kid at the end, who can't get over her schoolgirl crush on him-- not at all signifying any type of equality or character growth.As for the Maharani, I love Madame Ouspenskaya in the original despite her obvious Russian ethnicity. She seems very authoritative during the flood sequence. But Eugenie Leontovich is better I think in the remake. Leontovich is not afraid to tap into the more shrewish aspects of the character and fight Edwina no matter how ruthlessly. Ironically, I think Leontovich seems to be channeling Ouspenskaya's shrew in DODSWORTH.Now that I've addressed casting and performances, I want to talk about dialogue and special effects. The dialogue in the original is a little too stiff. A lot of it seems interchangeable, like it doesn't matter who is speaking it, because it is all coming from a third-person screen writing point of view. But in the remake the dialogue is much more personalized. The lines the characters utter seem more idiosyncratic and less archetypical. Meanwhile, the use of Cinemascope helps aid the special effects extravaganza in the remake in ways that make the action in the first one seem cropped or chopped off. I do agree that the splitting of the earth and the bursting of the dam in the first film were done very well and deserved at least an Oscar nomination (not a win over GONE WITH THE WIND's burning of Atlanta sequence). But the collapse of the bridge is better in the remake, because even though they may be using models in some shots, we see people losing their lives and the danger is much more apparent. There are many other things I could cite as examples regarding why I feel the second film is better than the original. But I will end for now with a comment about the overall sweeping nature of the film. The remake seems more epic to me, and much more ambiguous. When Lana rides off with Michael Rennie at the end, we know that this is not a real happy ending. She will wind up like Vivien Leigh in THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE. There will be other men behind her husband's back, young gigolos and hangers on that she will spoil to keep her company. She will always love Dr. Softi but continue to be punished for her immoral ways by being stuck in a loveless marriage with Rennie and forever denied her true Indian soul mate. As they drive off, and the words 'The End' flash over the screen, you know that it truly is the end of her happiness. MacMurray and Caulfield have the happy ending here, but not any of the other main characters. And back inside the palace, the Maharani, who is a twisted psychological mess of feminine success, takes comfort in having driven the so-called lady back to the gutter. It's a drama, a tragedy of epic proportions-- a wholly unnatural disaster.

James Hitchcock Lord Esketh, a British aristocrat, and his glamorous American wife, Edwina, are touring India and staying in the city of Ranchipur, where they are guests of the local Maharani. (The action is supposed to be set in India, even though we see a prominently displayed Pakistani flag in an early scene). Their marriage is an unhappy one and each despises the other. Edwina despises her husband because she sees him as weak and cowardly and because he only married her for her money. (She is an independently wealthy heiress). He despises her because he sees her as cold and heartless; we learn that she has been unfaithful to him with a number of different men. While in Ranchipur Edwina meets and has an affair with a young suntanned Welshman in a turban. Well, actually Richard Burton's character is supposed to be an Indian, Dr Safti, a physician and the adopted son of the Maharani. Today, the idea of a white actor in "brownface" playing an Indian would strike most people as politically incorrect, but was an accepted practice in the fifties, and at least Burton's performance is a lot less insensitive than that given by Peter Sellers in "The Millionairess" from a few years later. (Sellers was also playing an Indian doctor). Watching the film, I wondered if the use of the Christian name "Edwina" was a veiled reference to Edwina Mountbatten, another independently wealthy heiress, married to a British aristocrat, who visited India and was rumoured to have had an affair with an Indian man, in her case the politician Jawaharlal Nehru. I understand, however, that "The Rains of Ranchipur" is a remake of "The Rains Came" from 1939 (which I have never seen), and that the character had the same name both in this film and in the 1937 novel on which it was based. As the Mountbattens did not come to India until 1947, the coincidence was presumably unintentional. The Edwina-Safti romance is the mainspring of the plot, but for all Edwina's good looks she is so obviously spoilt, selfish and promiscuous that it is difficult to imagine any man, let alone one as intelligent and idealistic as Dr Safti, falling hopelessly in love with her. There is a subplot involving another romance between Tom Ransome, an alcoholic former lover of Edwina and close friend of Safti, and Fern, the daughter of a local missionary, but this arouses little interest. The acting is generally undistinguished. Burton, as though embarrassed by having been cast in a role to which he was ill-suited, is horribly stilted and wooden, giving by far his worst performance in any film of his which I have seen. The Russian-born Eugenie Leontovich as the Maharani is no more convincing as an Indian than is Burton. Lana Turner as Edwina and Fred MacMurray as Tom were both capable of much better things than this. Probably the best is Joan Caulfield as Fern. The intention seems to have been to contrast Fern's youth and innocence with the cynicism and corruption of the experienced older woman Edwina, so it is perhaps surprising that Caulfield, who at 33 was only a year younger than Turner, was cast in the role, but she is fresh and youthful-looking enough to succeed in making the contrast an effective one. The best thing about the film is its special effects. Although "The Rains of Ranchipur" is not a "disaster movie" in the sense that the film-makers of the seventies would have understood the term, an earthquake and the subsequent flood after the earthquake destroys a dam play important roles in the story. These scenes are very well done, are still convincingly impressive even in the era of CGI and the main reason why I have given the film an average mark. Unfortunately, there is little else to make the film worth watching today. Special effects apart, it is the sort of dull, turgid and implausible melodrama which typified Hollywood at its worst during the fifties. 5/10

Hans C. Frederick For those among us who grew up watching a lot of television in the 1960s,it's always a lot of fun seeing stars doing supporting roles earlier in their careers.And who's doing the bluff,hearty,amiable Sikh police captain?None other than John Banner,who went on to do the comic heavy Schultz,on"Hogan's Heroes."And,for all of his teutonic ponderousness,he does manage to carry it off.

Greg Couture Oh, dear! One of my favorite mid-Fifties Twentieth-Century Fox CinemaScopuses was nearly ruined for me a few years back when Bette Midler released her comedy album, "Mud WILL Be Flung, Tonight!" in which she does an elaborate routine in her character as "Soph" in bed with her boyfriend, "Ernie" who excuses himself to use the loo. When she hears certain sounds emanating from the bathroom, upon his return to the boudoir she demands: "Ernie, what the hell was that?!?" and he advises: "Soph, those were the Rains of Raunch-I-Poor!!" The routine goes on to appropriate a few other famous movie titles like "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "The Winds of Krakatoa" (i.e., "Krakatoa, East of Java")...well, you get the idea, I would guess!Anyway, Ms. Midler, no respecter of popular culture when it comes to her usually successful attempts at camp humor in her standup comedy routines, probably enjoyed this elaborate remake as much as I did, if she's ever seen it. 20th-Century Fox assembled a nicely balanced cast and assigned some top-flight professionals to give the whole thing the kind of gloss that's pretty much a thing of the past now. Of special note are the Academy Award-nominated special effects, rather convincing when I saw this on a big CinemaScope screen; some very nice use of DeLuxe Color (everyone looks handsome indeed, especially Miss Turner); and Hugo Friedhofer's tasteful score. (He was a composer who always successfully resisted producers' attempts to add music to an excessively gloppy extent and he was often astute in adding an exotic touch, where appropriate, with just a few bars of orchestration.) By the way I don't think, contrary to another comment here, that the production sent a second unit to Pakistan or anywhere outside of California. I might be wrong, since the opening sequence with Lord and Lady Esketh arriving by train into a bustling Indian metropolis is a terrific example of Hollywood fakery if it's not the real thing. There's one brief shot, however, where a limousine is seen turning into the supposed gates of the Maharani's compound and it is unmistakably the West Gate of Bel-Air, one of West Los Angeles' poshest subdivisions.