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Raintree County (film)

Raintree County
Raintree movieposter.jpg
Theatrical poster
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Produced by David Lewis
Screenplay by Millard Kaufman
Based on Raintree County
1948 novel
by Ross Lockridge, Jr.
Starring Montgomery Clift
Elizabeth Taylor
Eva Marie Saint
Lee Marvin
Rod Taylor
Music by Johnny Green
Cinematography Robert Surtees
Edited by John D. Dunning
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Release date
  • December 20, 1957 (1957-12-20)
Running time
182 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $5,474,000
Box office $9,080,000

Raintree County is a 1957 American Technicolor melodramatic film set during the American Civil War, directed by Edward Dmytryk. It stars Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, and Lee Marvin.

It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Ross Lockridge, Jr.

In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey (Montgomery Clift), a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) by Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor), a rich New Orleans girl. He has a brief and passionate affair with Susanna while she is visiting. Following her return to the South, she comes back to Indiana to tell Shawnessey she is pregnant with his child. John marries her out of honor and duty, leaving Nell heartbroken.

They move south to live with Susanna's family. He learns that Susanna's mother went insane and died in a suspicious fire, along with Susanna's father and a female slave implied as being the father's concubine. Susanna suspects that the slave may have been her biological mother. Gradually Susanna appears to be suffering from mental illness. She tells John that she faked pregnancy to trick him into marriage.

An abolitionist in the South, Shawnessey cannot fit in and they return to Freehaven in Raintree County before the outbreak of the Civil War. John works as a teacher and they have a child, Jimmy, born at the outbreak of the war. In the war's third year, Susanna develops severe paranoia and delusions. She flees Indiana with Jimmy and seeks refuge among her extended family in Georgia.

Shawnessey is determined to find her and recover his son. He enlists in the Union Army in hopes of encountering his wife and child. After fighting in terrible battles, he finds Jimmy at an old plantation and learns that Susanna has been placed in an insane asylum. He is wounded while carrying Jimmy back to Northern lines, and is discharged from the Union Army. Johnny searches for Susanna, finding her kept in terrible conditions at the asylum. He brings her back with him to Raintree County.


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