The Rainmaker

If you had a story set during the Great Depression in a sleepy, dusty little town suitable for the conning by a charlatan and the spinster daughter ripe for a sexual awakening by the same, who would you cast in those roles? Well, if we’re talking about the studio era of films, then the answers would clearly be Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. Lancaster was most potent when his athleticism and panther-like carnality were funneled into charismatic snakes, and Hepburn did a string of spinster roles throughout the 50s that she became nearly synonymous with these parts.

The Rainmaker is one of numerous stage play transposed to the big screen with a mere substitution of players. Gone are the stage veterans and in their place an assembly of movie stars and character types. Director Joseph Anthony doesn’t give any visual oomph and merely plants his camera to largely view his characters in medium shots. You half expect a proscenium arch to appear on the edges of the frame to really sell the effect of a filmed play.

Which means a lot of the heavy lifting is left to Lancaster and Hepburn, both of whom are solid if unremarkable here. Hepburn is, at least, twenty-years too old for this part and appears more like the matron of the family rather than the oldest sister and only daughter. Still, she gives her performance a stubborn likeability and never judges her character’s ambitions as too small. Her reading examines how badly this woman wants to be loved for who she is, demands it even, and provides tiny glimpses of vulnerability under the steely exterior.

While Lancaster uses his whole body to sell the role. One of cinema’s most physical actors, Lancaster is often bounding, or continuing movements throughout his entire body. He knew that the camera could catch little bodily movements as intricately as a tone of voice or facial expression, and he brings that to his performance. His carriage and posture say just as much about his character as his line readings, if not more. He emerges as a cock of the walk from the first frame and nearly develops a conscience, or something close to it, by the end.

The Rainmaker doesn’t add up to much and it is largely a minor work in the legacies of Hepburn and Lancaster, but it is enjoyable if turgid. With actors this magnetic and fiery how could it not be? They would play these types of roles better in other films, Elmer Gantry and Summertime to be specific, but I’ll be damned if that climatic scene in the rain doesn’t work every time.