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"Home from the Hill" is a 1960 big, sprawling film about the Hunnicut family, led by Robert Mitchum. Eleanor Parker plays his unhappy wife, George Hamilton plays his unhappy son Theron, and George Peppard plays a ranch hand named Rafe. Luana Patton is Theron's unhappy girlfriend Libby.

Captain Wade Hunnicut is the wealthiest and most powerful man in the Texas town in which he lives, but he's a philanderer, which has made his wife Hannah turn against him. She has basically raised their son Theron because she agreed to stay with Wade on that condition.

When Theron reaches his late teens, though, Wade changes his mind and decides to make a man out of him. This means learning to use a shotgun, hunt, and learn something about women, though Rafe sort of schools him in that.

Theron, however, finds out a family secret and grows to loathe his father and reject him. There are other complications as well concerning Theron's girlfriend Libby Halstead and her father (Everett Sloane).

This film plays out like a big soap opera but it holds one's interest. The accents are a little broad - in one scene it almost sounded like they were playing a game of one-oneupmanship as to whose accent was the broadest.

Younger people probably don't realize that George Hamilton had a film career. He was young, handsome, and could brood with the best of them. Today he parodies himself, having realized his limitations as an actor, though he's always been extremely likable. In this film, actually, he's quite good, in part thanks to Minnelli's direction.

George Peppard, on the other hand, always took himself very seriously and turns in an excellent performance as Rafe, a man carrying around a lot of hurt but won't let anybody see it.

Mitchum has a strong presence as Wade. He was a very charismatic actor and gives his character some real bite. Eleanor Parker has little to do, but her performance is that of a woman who, like Rafe, keeps the pain inside. It's a very subtle performance.

The characters in this film are very well developed. It's a good script with fine direction by Vincent Minnelli, so you wouldn't expect less than very good-excellent.

The ending of this film is satisfying, and the family drama rings true throughout. Recommended.

I think this is Vincente Minnelli's great unsung film and may in fact stand as his best. It features one of Robert Mitchum's most perfect performances. The movie is provocative in terms of its ideas of manhood(some of its themes, particularly those concerning hunting, are very Hemingway-ish)This movie also presents a way of living that is today becoming increasingly anachronistic and unpopular. It is for this reason also that it is so fascinating - it presents a window to an ever diminishing way of life. Of course it is first and foremost a melodrama, but this aspect I found to be often overshadowed by the secondary themes and the little details, like Robert Mitchum's den (was there ever a room that defined machismo the way this one does?).

Home From The Hill though it is located in Texas has the look and feel of those southern stories made so popular back in the day by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. This is not the Texas of say Giant, this is East Texas which bares quite a lot of resemblance to the delta country of Louisiana and Mississippi. And Robert Mitchum's Wade Hunnicutt is not quite the same kind of local patriarch as Rock Hudson's Bick Benedict.

Whatever else Bick Benedict was he was certainly loyal to Elizabeth Taylor. Whereas Robert Mitchum's been absolutely notorious for sowing his wild oats around the whole region. Eleanor Parker stays married to him, more for the sake of propriety than anything else, and for their son George Hamilton.

Some of Mitchum's good old boy drinking buddies like Guinn Williams and Denver Pyle send young Hamilton on that southern tradition, a futile snipe hunt. That little prank actually sets the whole plot of the film into gear. It's supposed to be women who gossip, but these good old boys also with some of their locker room gossip that Everette Sloane overhears that sets the climax of the film going.

Robert Mitchum is cast in one of his best roles and it's ironic that he was a second choice for Clark Gable. I doubt that Gable could have done better with this part. The always dependable Eleanor Parker matches Mitchum all the way with her performance as the suppressed wife.

George Hamilton and George Peppard got very good roles in Home from the Hill in the salad days of their respective careers.

Though Home from the Hill does veer into soap opera it's held together primarily by director Vincent Minnelli and by a great cast he assembled.

This is a well made typical genre movie that features some solid emotions and characters and offers some well written plot elements.

It's a coming of age movie but it also is a (melodramatic) family drama. These type of movies really had been popular in the past and most of them also are really great ones to watch. Too bad they just don't make movies such as these anymore. This movie might not be the best in its genre but it has more than anything other elements in it to compensate for this.

One of them most definitely is the cast. Robert Mitchum once again gives away one fine performance. The movie also features a great and still young looking George Hamilton and George Peppard, though Mitchum on the other hand still looks the way he did 20 years before this movie.

The movie handles all of the genre elements really well and know to bring it in a good and original way. Definitely a surprising movie from Vincente Minnelli, who got his fame for directing other type of- and less serious movies. I especially like the way George Hamilton's character gets developed and changes throughout the movie, from a mothers-child to a real adult. It was also great how they handled the Robert Mitchum character. They make him not-likable but at the same time also intriguing and interesting enough to not hate him. It's sort of too bad that they made the mistake to let his character slowly disappear out of the movie for most of the last third of the movie, while he starts off as the main character. The movie does a good job at portraying the relationships between the characters, which is an essential part for movies such as these.

Despite the fact that the movie its story definitely has soap-opera like dramatic developments in it, you still get drawn in to it, which is I think due to the interesting characters and actors that portray them. It keeps the movie real.

The movie is set in the South of the United States, which gives the movie that special kind of- and warm atmosphere. Its sets, costumes and props all add to this. The time period the movie is set in also definitely benefits the movie. The movie also has a surprising good and likable musical score, by Bronislau Kaper.

Worth seeing if you get the chance to.

8/10

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Captain Wade Hunnicutt (Robert Mitchum) is shot by a jealous husband during a hunting trip. He's a wealthy powerful womanizer in his Texas town. Hannah (Eleanor Parker) is his long-suffering wife. She promised to stay as long as she raised their son Theron (George Hamilton). He's now 17, innocent and somewhat clueless. Rafe Copley (George Peppard) is Wade's right hand man. Wade wants to toughen Theron into a man like himself rather than a momma's boy.

It is often the case that the word melodrama denotes an inferior film. It's hard to say that the melodrama here has detracted from this movie. It is easy to say that the material demands the melodrama and the movie steers into it. The acting is terrific and well-fitting. This is like a night time soap and it is a good example of one.