Meditations on an Obscure Movie
Jul. 1st, 2023 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraBetween the smoke and the heat, yesterday was awful.
I could barely keep my eyes open.
My brain wouldn’t function. I couldn’t work at all.
Finally, I lay down, intending to read. Instead, I fell into a deep sleep.
Woke up four hours later—which means, of course, I was awake a good chunk of last night.
###
When I wake up in the middle of the night like that, I invariably wake up to a world where everyone is living a deep and meaningful life filled with deep and meaningful connections—everyone, that is, except for me-e-e-eeee.
And that means I have to track down a bunch of people I don’t like on FB —just so I can see how deeply and meaningfully their lives are transpiring in spite of my dislike, or maybe even because of my dislike: It’s entirely possible—right?—that I am such a toxic creature, my very dislike brings good fortune.
I’ll have to figure out the science behind that one later.
###
The middle of the night is for rabbit holes.
Mine last night was an obscure movie made in 1957 called Raintree County.
God knows why Raintree County has been bubbling up into my consciousness these past few days.
I was five years old when I saw it in a movie theater.
My mother couldn’t afford babysitters, so whenever she wanted to go to the movies, she ported me along with her. Watching all those movies while the boundary between real and imaginary was still so permeable shaped my mind in unusual ways, no doubt about it.
###
Anyway, Raintree County is a deeply weird movie—think mad, tragic Mrs. Rochester #1 plucked from Jane Eyre and dropped into Gone With the Wind. A kind of horror story, really.
It could never be re-released today despite its all-star cast (Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Lee Marvin), its massive budget (equivalent to $108 million today), and its pioneering use of a widescreen process called Ultra Panavision 70.
Basically, it’s all about Elizabeth Taylor going insane because she suspects she has (gasp!) Black blood.
If you ever need a gauge to measure how deeply racism was embedded into the pre-Civil-Rights-Movement American consciousness, let Raintree County be your go-to.
###
Here’s Liz Taylor doing her Scarlett O’Hara imitation:
And here’s her creepy doll collection with which Montgomery Clift must share a marital bed:
Raintree County is also deeply weird (and fascinating) because of its backstory —a glimmering green meta-narrative hovering over each and every scene.
It was while filming this movie that Montgomery Clift had the famous automobile accident that ruined the left side of his face.
Thereafter, Raintree County’s director had to go to great lengths only to film the right side of Montgomery Clift’s face.
But since movies are never filmed sequentially, right-sided Monty is sprinkled—seemingly at random—throughout the movie. The effect is really, really strange.
###
The accident took place in the Hollywood Hills.
Monty was driving home from a party at Liz Taylor’s place. Drove straight into a telephone pole.
Liz came running out. Saw Monty under the shattered dashboard. His face had blown up like a balloon because broken teeth were occluding his airway.
Like a trooper, Liz stuck her arm down his throat, pulled the teeth out.
When filming resumed in Natchez, Mississippi, Monty brought along a beautiful leather briefcase filled with pills, needles, and syringes and began subsisting on a diet of barely cooked steak smothered with salt, pepper, and butter. Also, he began running around Natchez naked in the middle of the night.
###
The movie is based on a novel that has its own weird backstory, a kind of reverse mirror image of the story behind A Confederacy of Dunces.
After the usual struggles to get a first novel published, Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. finally hits paydirt. His manuscript is 600,000 words long and weighs 25 pounds. He gets a $3,500 advance—
MGM immediately pounces. Will pay him $150,000 for movie rights (equivalent to $3.5 million today), but only if he agrees to cut 100,000 words.
Self-editing proves to be such a torment that one night, he goes out into his garage, gets into his car, turns the key in the ignition lock, and poof! Dies.
In the suicide note he leaves for his wife, he writes, Whatever made me think I could get away with it?
I could barely keep my eyes open.
My brain wouldn’t function. I couldn’t work at all.
Finally, I lay down, intending to read. Instead, I fell into a deep sleep.
Woke up four hours later—which means, of course, I was awake a good chunk of last night.
###
When I wake up in the middle of the night like that, I invariably wake up to a world where everyone is living a deep and meaningful life filled with deep and meaningful connections—everyone, that is, except for me-e-e-eeee.
And that means I have to track down a bunch of people I don’t like on FB —just so I can see how deeply and meaningfully their lives are transpiring in spite of my dislike, or maybe even because of my dislike: It’s entirely possible—right?—that I am such a toxic creature, my very dislike brings good fortune.
I’ll have to figure out the science behind that one later.
###
The middle of the night is for rabbit holes.
Mine last night was an obscure movie made in 1957 called Raintree County.
God knows why Raintree County has been bubbling up into my consciousness these past few days.
I was five years old when I saw it in a movie theater.
My mother couldn’t afford babysitters, so whenever she wanted to go to the movies, she ported me along with her. Watching all those movies while the boundary between real and imaginary was still so permeable shaped my mind in unusual ways, no doubt about it.
###
Anyway, Raintree County is a deeply weird movie—think mad, tragic Mrs. Rochester #1 plucked from Jane Eyre and dropped into Gone With the Wind. A kind of horror story, really.
It could never be re-released today despite its all-star cast (Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Lee Marvin), its massive budget (equivalent to $108 million today), and its pioneering use of a widescreen process called Ultra Panavision 70.
Basically, it’s all about Elizabeth Taylor going insane because she suspects she has (gasp!) Black blood.
If you ever need a gauge to measure how deeply racism was embedded into the pre-Civil-Rights-Movement American consciousness, let Raintree County be your go-to.
###
Here’s Liz Taylor doing her Scarlett O’Hara imitation:
And here’s her creepy doll collection with which Montgomery Clift must share a marital bed:
Raintree County is also deeply weird (and fascinating) because of its backstory —a glimmering green meta-narrative hovering over each and every scene.
It was while filming this movie that Montgomery Clift had the famous automobile accident that ruined the left side of his face.
Thereafter, Raintree County’s director had to go to great lengths only to film the right side of Montgomery Clift’s face.
But since movies are never filmed sequentially, right-sided Monty is sprinkled—seemingly at random—throughout the movie. The effect is really, really strange.
###
The accident took place in the Hollywood Hills.
Monty was driving home from a party at Liz Taylor’s place. Drove straight into a telephone pole.
Liz came running out. Saw Monty under the shattered dashboard. His face had blown up like a balloon because broken teeth were occluding his airway.
Like a trooper, Liz stuck her arm down his throat, pulled the teeth out.
When filming resumed in Natchez, Mississippi, Monty brought along a beautiful leather briefcase filled with pills, needles, and syringes and began subsisting on a diet of barely cooked steak smothered with salt, pepper, and butter. Also, he began running around Natchez naked in the middle of the night.
###
The movie is based on a novel that has its own weird backstory, a kind of reverse mirror image of the story behind A Confederacy of Dunces.
After the usual struggles to get a first novel published, Ross Franklin Lockridge Jr. finally hits paydirt. His manuscript is 600,000 words long and weighs 25 pounds. He gets a $3,500 advance—
MGM immediately pounces. Will pay him $150,000 for movie rights (equivalent to $3.5 million today), but only if he agrees to cut 100,000 words.
Self-editing proves to be such a torment that one night, he goes out into his garage, gets into his car, turns the key in the ignition lock, and poof! Dies.
In the suicide note he leaves for his wife, he writes, Whatever made me think I could get away with it?
no subject
Date: 2023-07-01 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-01 02:45 pm (UTC)Interesting how different people can react to the same thing in such different ways! 😀
I thought Raintree County was mega-creepy. Made mega-creepier because of how it strived to have a message: The bee-you-tee-ful Raintree, like the Blue Bird of Happiness, lives in your own back swamp.... 😀
Montgomery Clift doesn't do it for me, I guess. His best film (for me) was A Place in the Sun, a movie that showcased the singularly cold self-involved quality, which is all I have ever picked up from him as an actor.
La Liz and her Southern accent were a hoot, though.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-01 06:53 pm (UTC)I don't believe I ever liked La Liz in any movie. I did like Eva Marie Saint in Raintree County (and in North by Northwest). As for Monty, well, he certainly was a beautiful man (until the accident).