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| Lewis Milestone: Rain (US 1932). Walter Huston (Alfred Davidson) and Joan Crawford (Sadie Thompson). |
Pioggia / Sade (Yle TV2 1995).
US © 1932 Feature Productions, Inc. Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Feature Productions.
Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the pièce of the same name (1922) by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, itself based on the story Miss Thompson (1921) by William Somerset Maugham. Scen.: Maxwell Anderson. F.: Oliver T. Marsh – b&w. M.: W. Duncan Mansfield. Scgf.: Richard Day. Mus.: Alfred Newman. Int.: Joan Crawford (Sadie Thompson), Walter Huston (Alfred Davidson), Fred Howard (Hodgson), Ben Hendricks Jr. (Griggs), William Gargan (sergeant Tim O’Hara), Mary Shaw (Ameena), Guy Kibbee (Joe Horn), Kendall Lee (Mrs. MacPhail), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Davidson).
94 min
Soundtrack (not credited):
"The Marines' Hymn" ("From the Halls of Montezuma / To the shores of Tripoli") comp. Jacques Offenbach (1867), lyr. unknown.
"The Saint Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy (1914).
"Wabash Blues" comp. Fred Menken, lyr. Dave Ringle (1921).
"Baby Face" comp. Harry Akst, lyr. Benny Davis (1926).
Telecast in Finland 16 July 1995, 25 Jan 1998 (Yle TV2)
Restored in 4K in 2021 by VCI Entertainment, in collaboration with Library of Congress and The Mary Pickford Foundation at VCI Entertainment laboratory, from the picture positive and the positive soundtrack, both created from the nitrate negatives.
DCP by courtesy of The Mary Pickford Foundation.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.
Introduced by Farran Smith Nehme.
Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 21 June 2025.
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "A moody pre-Code tale of a puritanical and obsessive missionary (Walter Huston) in the South Seas trying to save the soul of a tart (Joan Crawford) – only to succumb to her allure. After running on Broadway for three years, Sadie Thompson, the leading character of Somerset Maugham’s famous story, had become cheaply popularised, the butt of lewd vaudeville jokes. Milestone had to “serious up” the act, so a script by Maxwell Anderson, partly based on a stage version by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, balanced carnality with the director’s favourite theme of men and their environment."
"Rain opens with tactile shots of raindrops falling on soil and vegetation and follows a small group of travellers trapped in a poky hotel. Among them is Sadie, blasting out St. Louis Blues on her gramophone. The trumpet sound – growling with seductive, muted plungers – feels like an invitation to bed. This was far from comfortable for Crawford, who blamed her unease on the alien environment: being away from the usual luxury of MGM sets and haunted by the iconic performances of the same role on stage (by Jeanne Eagels) and screen (by Gloria Swanson, directed by Raoul Walsh)."
"Long gone was the slick but straightforward style of Crawford’s MGM films. Milestone introduces compositions that are idiosyncratic and expressive – even lyrical. He revamps his signature circular mise-en-scène and 360-degree camera movements to frame Crawford as she entices the crowd and dances with a sailor. After decades in the public domain, this restored version now reveals the true extent of Milestone’s vision and his attack on self-righteousness." Ehsan Khoshbakht
AA: Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Rain I had never seen before, but the superb new restoration was worth waiting for.
There are three Hollywood adaptations: one silent, one sound film in black and white, and one in Technicolor and 3-D.
The last time I saw an adaptation in Bologna was in 2002. Curtis Bernhardt's Miss Sadie Thompson (US 1952) was screened in the "Miracle of the 3-D" section in a double 35 mm projection on a silver screen at Cinéma Lumière. In this Columbia production, Rita Hayworth is Sadie, José Ferrer the missionary and Aldo Ray the sergeant. A good Rita Hayworth vehicle – but the most repressed of them all – crushed under the weight of the Production Code Administration unlike the predecessors. Although the "Miracle of the 3-D" implications sound salacious, the movie is rather demure.
The year before I had programmed in Helsinki in our Raoul Walsh retrospective Sadie Thompson (US 1928), produced by Gloria Swanson for United Artists. We screened a 35 mm print from George Eastman House, complete with the Dennis Doros / Kino International reconstruction of the missing finale played back from a LD LaserDisc. It is the definitive adaptation. Everything feels right in one of the greatest films of both Walsh and Swanson. Walsh himself played the sergeant in his last acting role, and the chemistry is irresistible in a film full of sex, tragedy, hypocrisy and a Shakespearean sense of humour.
Farran Smith Neame in her introduction detailed the achievement of the restoration of Rain: what was cut away from the negative in 1937 from this Pre-Code milestone (pun intended), has now been brought back.
As Ehsan Khoshbakht points out in his program note, the sensual impact of the titular motif of the rain is extraordinary. The monsoon is the overwhelming experience. The nature takes over literally. "Always in all ways". At times, rain montages border on the avantgarde, reminiscent of Regen (NL 1939) by Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken.
Rain, set in Pago Pago in American Samoa, belongs to the "paradise lost" cycle of the cinema of the period. It started with Moana (US 1926) and continued in White Shadows in the South Seas (US 1928) and Tabu (US 1931). Whatever we think about their inherent colonial gaze, these films celebrate and mourn the last remnants of an earthly paradise, the happiest on Earth, the Garden of Eden, from which we have been expelled. A banished prostitute, drunken sailors and a religious zealot are what we have on offer instead.
Lewis Milestone was a great director of men in war, work and crime. He had just directed a masterpiece about war (All Quiet on the Western Front, US 1930) and a pioneering screwball / newspaper thriller relevant to the gangster cycle (The Front Page, US 1931), a Pre-Code version in which Hildy is a man, making the newsroom an all-male space.
Farran Smith Neame in her introduction and Molly Haskell, with us in Bologna, praise Joan Crawford in Rain. Obviously there is something that I miss. I admire Joan Crawford, particularly her performances in the 1940s and the 1950s, when she was in full command of her art and craft, and a monument of Hollywood glamour in her distinctive way.
Her career was distinguished by steely resolve and indomitable willpower. From the turmoil of the Roaring Twenties and all the abuse and exploitation involved, she fought her way to the top. Mildred Pierce and Johnny Guitar... need we say more. They are in a way fictional autobiographies. But Molly Haskell in From Reverence to Rape comments on her many identities in Possession: "For reasons that are partly the fault of script and direction, but not entirely, we begin to wonder which, if any, is the real Crawford, so perfectly does she become each successive role. There finally seems to be no connecting link, and the madwoman roaming the streets in the film's first sequence becomes a perfect expression of the end of the line, the total confusion and centerlessness for a woman in whom existence has replaced essence." (Boldface mine).
Sadie Thompson's is a world with which Joan Crawford was familiar in a general way, having started as a showgirl, chorus girl and flapper star. She was not a subtle actor. She excelled in melodrama and exaggeration with an almost expressionistic appetite. She is a great Gothic actor. But her loud and burlesque interpretation puzzles me here. Crawford was aware of Sadie Thompson having turned into a figure of parody, but I wonder why she interprets her this way.
Sadie's transformation is stunning, and Crawford switches to the opposite extreme in a way that could also be characterized as Gothic. In Sadie's religious conversion, she turns pale like a ghost and lifeless like a zombie. She becomes unrecognizable. It is a shocking chapter.
But I cannot relate to her earthy sensuality as Sadie like I do with Gloria Swanson and Rita Hayworth. My searchlight stops on Milestone. He was not a great director of women. He does not seem to have been interested in sex (between man and woman).
All movies have great casts. The best Sadie is Gloria Swanson. The best missionary is Walter Huston (Lionel Barrymore and José Ferrer are good, too). The best sergeant is Aldo Ray (while Raoul Walsh with Gloria Swanson is also irresistible). It is worthwhile to see all three.
Raoul Walsh made further films of notorious woman on the run from San Francisco: Klondike Annie with Mae West and The Revolt of Mamie Stover with Jane Russell.
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| Sadie Thompson (US 1928). Raoul Walsh directs Gloria Swanson. |
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