La mia terra

The story of This Earth Is Mine is very interesting, and it marks a new topic not yet seen in films as of 1959: wine. While Sideways has brought a new love of wine to modern audiences, back in 1959, moviegoers didn't know their way around wineries. It must have been extremely exciting and educational to see the inside of real wineries: casks, caves, tasting rooms, etc. Filmed on location, this movie brought an up close view of Napa to the rest of the country. Beringer, Stags' Leap, Paul Masson, Beaulieu, Mayacamas, Inglenook, Schramsberg, and eight other Napa Valley wineries let Hollywood add authenticity to this movie.

Claude Rains plays the patriarch owner of a Napa vineyard. I love seeing Claude in such a meaty role nearly thirty years after The Invisible Man. When he talks about his love for the land and the history in the soil, it brings tears to his eyes (and to ours). His daughter Dorothy McGuire (with an excellent, completely believable performance) is devoted to his care and to working the land, especially because her childless marriage to Kent Smith is fraught with problems. Kent has an illegitimate son with the invalid Anna Lee: Rock Hudson. And when the long-lost granddaughter Jean Simmons moves to Napa, she might go against her better judgment and fall for the rebellious Rock.

Doesn't that sound interesting? And that's just the beginning. This is one gigantic soap opera with double-crosses, deceit, forbidden love, secrets, passion, and violence. Set during Prohibition, it's fascinating to see what a family winery handles their situation. I look at it as a story of loyalty, sometimes tested, broken, and kept. If you like sweeping sagas, you've got to check this one out. 1959 was a contentious year, and the Members of the Board here at Hot Toasty Rag reluctantly didn't include This Earth Is Mine with a Best Picture nomination. It really is a wonderful movie, though, and if there were less competition, it certainly would have been honored.

It looks like it was posted on you tube by Universal as their name appears in the bottom left hand corner. It is the full Cinemascope version and beautiful color. Excellent cast with names to remember. I have not seen this for many, many years but have been looking for it constantly. Now thanks, hopefully to Universal it is available for all to see again.

Locations in the Napa Valley give absolute realism to the production.

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 ****

If the director and other participants had done as well as Rock Hudson to make a good story out of this, it would have been a real success. Had forgotten just how handsome and talented he was. Sure do miss special actors like Mr. Hudson. Saw this movie last night, 5/9/02, and enjoyed it. Even if it was mediocre, it was far better than the trash filmed today.

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.