davidcarniglia A very powerful drama. Lee Remick and Steve McQueen give fine performances as a hard-luck couple. The supporting cast is great, especially Kimberly Block, as a very perceptive and sensitive child. McQueen's Henry never really escapes the abusive influence of Georgia Simmon's Miss Kate, his former guardian.McQueen spends the whole movie simultaneously waiting for his next meltdown, and trying to dodge it. That he is unsuccessful, even after Miss Kate's death, is a tragic, if expected outcome. What's unexpected, however, is that Remick's Georgette, along with her daughter, simply trudge onward. They are strong enough to be on their own, given the occasional help and encouragement from a stable Don Murray-type.Murray's role is interesting because he's kind of McQueen's shadow, his opposite in every way. He acts as a surrogate husband/father to Georgette and Margaret Rose; in fact he's available. In another movie he would marry Georgette. In my alternative plot, since McQueen's off to prison again, he grants Georgette a divorce, knowing that she and his child will be in good hands with his friend Slim.But this movie doesn't go easy on its characters. It's very poignant seeing Margaret Rose gaze hopefully at the recently-planted chinaberry tree, when she's in fact literally uprooted just as she starts to feel at home in Columbus. She's never very comfortable with McQueen; she admires him for his singing, and somewhat abstractly for the stability that she hopes he represents, but he seems never to really be a part of the family.He never calls her by name, she's merely "the baby." Murray's Slim, on the other hand, she just sort of naturally accepts, sensing his calm but strong nature. Outwardly, Henry's a tough knock-a-bout, performing and carousing at the honky-tonks, getting in fights, and ripping around in his decrepit convertible. But he's haunted by the memory and latent power that Miss Kate represents.Her house is as scary as she is. A Victorian that's crumbling around her; with a scary housekeeper, and the long stairs up to her dark room. Still, Henry loyally sits by her as she's dying, only to hear one more rebuke that are her last words. Another alternative plot, again a simpler, nicer resolution, would have him cash in the silver that he gathers up from her treasures to get a jump-start on his stillborn music career. But, no, instead he just goes nuts, cracking himself up at the graveyard along with his car. We get the feeling that Georgette and Margaret Rose won't see him again, they'll find another chinaberry tree in another town down the road.

classicsoncall Steve McQueen draws on the experience of his own unhappy youth in his portrayal of Henry Thomas, a would be singer who's recently paroled, as he tries to make it as the front man of a local string band in Columbus, Texas. His dysfunction as a husband, father and indeed, as a human being is poignantly demonstrated in his first appearance on screen with wife Georgette (Lee Remick), he merely shakes her hand. If you didn't know this was going to be a sad and depressing film, this would have been the first hint.As the viewer, one painfully relates to Lee Remick's character, desperately looking for a way to reconnect with her husband, but finally realizing that she must come to terms with her disillusionment and head for something better for herself and her young daughter (Kimberly Block). One's appreciation of the movie will have to come from the performances of the principal players and not the story itself as it's not a film that will leave you hopeful.What adds to the already somber tone of the movie was a pall that was cast during filming with the announcement of John F. Kennedy's assassination. For McQueen, who had met Kennedy earlier in his career, the event was as traumatic as for the rest of the cast and crew. Filming was interrupted for a number of days before shooting could resume, and it wouldn't be out of the question that the President's death had a subliminal impact on the tone of the story.

dbdumonteil "Baby the rain must fall" is a slow-moving intimate story;so if you're looking for an action-packed movie such as many of McQueen's ,you probably won't get something out of it.Filmed in stark black and white ,in a dreary landscape ,with a sky so low it might crumble and fall on the unfortunate couple.Lee Remick ,excellent as ever ,portrays a strong woman ,who had to cope with many setbacks and who however succeeded in raising her little girl.And most of all,she stands by her man,she 's convinced that he will be a famous singer/songwriter some day.Mac Queen is moving as the father -the scene when he says goodbye to her is really harrowing- but less credible as a singer (Clint Eastwood did a better job in "honky tonk man" ) .Like in some other movies by Robert Mulligan ,there is a mysterious side ,something threatening in the dark : Mulligan's flair for eerie disturbing atmosphere was already present in "the spiral road" and would emerge again in later works such as " the stalking moon" and its "enemy" as omnipresent as he is almost invisible and "the other" in which he creates terror in the midday sun.Here "Miss Kate" represents the repressed hidden terror back in the hero's childhood .This lady only appears on her death bed and there's an almost unbearable desecration scene."Baby the rain must fall" never takes the easy way out:for instance ,no romance between Remick and Don Murray,the nice deputy and the end of the movie can be seen as the beginning of a new "cycle" : the heroine will wait till her husband is released,then they 'll try to pick up the pieces till...

writers_reign Horton Foote wrote some decent stage plays, some fine television dramas and was equally adept at dramatising works from other mediums for the big screen. It is indisputable that the highlight of his career was his screenplay for Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird so that anything post-Mockingbird was somewhat anti-climactic. In the event for his follow-up screenplay he chose to adapt an earlier play/teleplay of his own, The Travelling Lady and to team up again with director Robert Mulligan who had, of course, directed Mockingbird. I haven't seen The Travelling Lady in either of its earlier formats but given a title like that it's reasonable to assume its focus was on the eponymous character who is played here by Lee Remick. For reasons best known to himself and Mulligan Foote has now given the lion's share of the story to Henry Thomas (Steve McQueen) rather than his wife, Georgia (Remick), presumably because McQueen had more box office clout than Remick. Foote specialized in wistful, rural dramas (The Trip To Bountiful for example) and this is yet one more fish from the same bouillabaisse, neither better nor worse than any other. Although she had a wide range (amoral perjerer, Anatomy of a Murder; nymphomaniac, The Detective) Remick excelled in clean-cut fiances, wives and mothers and to all intents and purposes she walks away with the film under McQueen's nose. This is a quiet, gentle film full of acute observations of rural life and the mores of small town America and is ripe for rediscovery.