This Earth Is Mine

"This Earth Is Mine" is a very glossy film from Universal Studios that obviously cost a lot of money. It featured some top stars and was set in lovely Napa Valley....but, sadly, the story was apparently written by chimpanzees...albeit moderately talented chimps! In other words, it looks great...but is, essentially, trash when it comes to writing.

The film begins with Elizabeth Rambeau coming to Napa to see the family she's never met. Apparently, her father ran off with her mother long ago and she was raised away from her father's extended family's influence. As for this new family, they are wealthy grape growers...the pride of the county.

When Elizabeth meets her cousin, John (Rock Hudson), she sees that he's a bit of a black sheep in the family. While the patriarch (Claude Rains) seems content to wait until prohibition EVENTUALLY ends (it's been 12 years already...so he's an insanely patient man), John is in favor of selling the grapes to the highest bidders...which, not surprisingly, are the mob who is eager to convert this grape juice into wine.

As far as John and Elizabeth go, this is a HUGE problem with the film. First, she detests him and he insists she REALLY means 'yes'...a very dangerous trope. Second, out of the blue, she DOES come to love him. Not only was this dangerous, as it lends credence to the 'she says NO when she means YES' mentality but also because she goes from hating him to loving John for no discernible reason. This makes no sense and really is bad writing. What's next? See the film...or not.

So, if this is just a bad but very slick film, why did I watch it in the first place? Well, I recently moved to California wine country and live within relatively short driving distance from Napa. And, the film is interesting in this sense. Seeing the old vineyards and what Napa was like long ago (it's set in the 1930s) was interesting. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is poorly written and dull. There are some nice story elements (such as the illegitimate child portion of the movie), but overall it's tedious and not the movie it could have been. It only earns a 4 because it is interesting historically and looks nice. Otherwise, it's a slick and glitzy bad movie.

This is a most attractive movie featuring a stunning cast.It has a haunting quality that left me thinking and wanting to view it again.Jean Simmons and Dorothy McGuire play their parts with absolute conviction and both ladies look lovely too.Claude Rains is superb and Rock Hudson gives a star performance in a challenging role.I love so many films made at Universal in the late 50's and early 60's;nice photography,costumes,make-up,hair etc. David Allen (New Zealand)

Soap operatic romantic tosh of an unusually high order thanks mainly to the superlative direction of Henry King working, as he so often did, with sub-standard material. The setting is the California vineyards, the period Prohibition and this film, based on a novel by Alice Tisdale Hobart, is clearly a forerunner of such television series as "Dallas" and "Dynasty" with Claude Rains as the ruler of this empire, Dorothy McGuire, his ambitious daughter and Rock Hudson and Jean Simmons his grand-children who are in love with each other, (don't ask!).

It's the kind of film that attracted star players and did the business back in the late fifties with quality usually taking a backseat to quantity but King was something of a master at this sort of thing imbuing the ridiculous plot with a seriousness it didn't warrant. Rains and McGuire and, to a lesser extent, Simmons take the acting credits while Hudson just seems to be having a good time in the sure and certain knowledge he won't be winning any Oscars if he keeps making movies like this. No classic, then, but a very sturdy entertainment nevertheless.

... after all this film was made in 1959, in the age of "good government", the pledge of allegiance every morning etc. Part of the plot is that John Rambeau (Rock Hudson), one of the grandsons in a family that oversees a sprawling vineyard empire, supposedly will do anything to get what he wants when he wants it. This is towards the end of Prohibition, and the patriarch of the family, (Claude Rains), insists on only selling table grapes, on buying the crops of all of the smaller vineyards and plowing them under, and doing so because "this is the law gentlemen", to quote Kevin Costner. And he has been doing this for a dozen years. Except nobody followed the law. People drank more because of Prohibition, and the mafia, which was a two bit outfit confined to gambling and prostitution before 1920, became richer than they could ever imagine because it was illegal to sell alcohol but not to buy or possess it.

Today John Rambeau seems like the only one smart enough to figure out that this is a silly law not worth following, and why go broke when you can sell the grapes to bootleggers and make money? You are not violating any moral code, or actually the silly law itself by selling the grapes to bootleggers. Like I said, in the age of 50's conformity this may sound selfish, but not today. John also has a bad habit of loving and leaving the ladies, so no wonder when he meets one he really likes (Jean SImmons as a distant English cousin) , she can't take him seriously and is considering going through with an arranged marriage to a guy so boring he could double as a department store mannequin.

It's really a beautifully photographed film, but it is like a badly organized Douglas Sirk film - just too much melodrama and too many subplots that really have nothing to do with one another. Still, I have to wonder why it is so hard to find considering the all star cast. With Claude Rains as the kind old patriarch, Rock Hudson as the big as life prodigal, Dorothy McGuire in a role that is more...well, let me just say, more witchy than her usual well meaning passive characters, with Kent Smith as her neglected husband.

The patriarch of a winemaking dynasty in 1931 Napa Valley welcomes his pretty young granddaughter from England--she thinks she's there for a visit, but her grandfather is plotting to marry her off to a cousin in order to absorb vineyard holdings and keep the winery in the family for future generations. Meanwhile, another cousin has an eye for the girl, though he's in the middle of a devil's bargain between Chicago gangsters and bootleggers ("modern dealings") due to the current Prohibition, all behind the old man's back. Wooden adaptation of Alice Tisdale Hobart's novel "The Cup and the Sword" is an exposition-heavy soaper full of hotheads spouting off, and Rock Hudson explaining everything to Jean Simmons (and to the audience) to keep her up to speed on the cast of characters, their functions and relationships to each other. If this story were to work at all, Hobart's book should have been thrown out or rethought altogether. There are too many people here with different agendas, too much conniving and manipulation, and melodrama as thick as a wine vat full of rotting grapes. Casey Robinson is responsible for the pedantic screenplay, which isn't much better than director Henry King's execrable staging (check out that welcoming dinner for Simmons, with everyone at one long table facing a swimming pool). The film, which gets off to a poor start with an awful theme song composed by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, has been produced with considerable polish, and it certainly benefits from Claude Rains' performance as grandfather Phillipe. Otherwise, overwrought and occasionally laughable. *1/2 from ****