Le sillage de la violence

The team that brought you To Kill A Mockingbird has also given us Baby The Rain Must Fall another southern based drama though the protagonist is hardly as admirable as Atticus Finch. Steve McQueen and Lee Remick star in this film as a married couple trying to make a new start in life after McQueen is released on parole from prison.

McQueen is a musician/singer of sorts and while I doubt he could have a career in big time country music, he doesn't have the talent to make the really big time. You won't see McQueen at the Grand Ole Opry, but he could make a respectable living doing the honky-tonks if it weren't for an ungovernable temper. In the few instances we see it displayed we never do see exactly what sets him off, the film might have been better if we had, we might understand McQueen more.

But the temper is a given and he's on parole. A wife and a daughter who the people of his Texas home town have never met and don't know the existence of, have come to join him. Lee Remick is the patient and loving wife, but she's coming slowly to the realization that this just isn't going to work.

Don Murray plays the local sheriff and a childhood friend who does what he can for McQueen. It's interesting to speculate whether Remick and Murray will get together afterward. Paul Fix has the same kind of part he did in To Kill A Mockingbird as a kindly judge.

If James Dean had lived this would have been a perfect role for him. But McQueen who had a background of foster care, who was a product of the social welfare system raising him, had a lot to draw on for his performance.

Steve McQueen did his own vocals though country singer Glenn Yarborough had a hit from the title song. Better that way then to have a real singer doing it lest the viewer think this guy has the talent to make it big.

Although this is not as good as To Kill A Mockingbird, writer Horton Foote and director Robert Mulligan did a bang up job in Baby The Rain Must Fall.

Beautiful performances from Steve McQueen and especially Lee Remick highlight this rather sad rambling film of the type Hollywood doesn't make anymore. A small personal drama that explores the lives of regular people just struggling to make a place for themselves in the world. Nothing blows up, it's all about emotions here. Horton Foote's screenplay, based on his play, shows his customary understanding of how people react and interact with each other while Ernest Laszlo stark black and white cinematography evokes the dusty small town Texas setting in a way color never could. Something that you'd find either on the indie circuit or maybe on cable today certainly not in major markets as this was and hardly with stars of this magnitude.

Being a parole officer myself,this uniquely sad and frustrating movie is exactly what goes on in the recitivist's life. A good caring wife, new family, he knows what his weak points are, but does them anyway maintaining the downward spiral to the inevitable return to prison. The victim here is not McQueen but the wife and child and their helplessness in getting him to be what they want. A responsible and loving husband/father. This is exactly what we see in the job every day. The sad part, there is no help or hope for the family....

I have read the reviews on the title "Baby The Rain Must Fall" and I say anyone who doesn't love this movie is out of their mind, to me Steve McQueen never gave a bad performance, and yes that even includes "The Hunter" and the Campy "The Blob", This film is basically about a dreamer who can't seem to stay on the right side of the law and out of trouble,and Lee Remick, I can never tire of watching her, this is a **** star movie and a real gem

For those of you who didn't like the film, well all I have to say is go watch Howard The Duck instead, because I am sure that is your "Casablanca"

This film comes close to being something truly great. It is beautifully photographed and acted (particularly the work of Lee Remick), and the theme, not confronted head on, of child abandonment/abuse, which plays under the images, is quite powerfully evoked. The film's shortcomings are mainly mechanical: some rough transitions in the story-telling; the unsatisfactory attempts by Steve McQueen at miming to a too-professional singing voice; and the omission from the scenario of one or two more direct references to the childhood from which McQueen's dysfunctional character has emerged. Certainly, the loving inactions between Remick's character and her screen daughter, Margaret Rose, are completely convincing and form a strong counterpoint to her husband's damaged personality. But we are not sure where we should be focusing: on their relationship, on the wife and husband relationship, or on his relationship with his adoptive mother (who appears only briefly, but is the unspoken menace). Of course, this difficulty is very much part of what the film is about; however, the various relationships sit so apart from each other, the tragic impact of the one on the others is somewhat lost. I suppose it is a testament to the delicacy and understated-ness of Robert Mulligan's directorial touch (seen to greater effect in 'To Kill a Mockingbird') that this sort of reaction is called up at all. One feels this film has so much that is good, the potential is there... A reflection of its time, perhaps: while it was being made, news broke of a shooting in Dallas and the death of a young president.