Cette terre qui est mienne

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.

... 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.

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)

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.

Set during the last years of Prohibition, This Earth Is Mine tells the story of the Rambeau family of the Napa Valley, prominent wine makers who are having a rough go of it during those years. Family patriarch is Claude Rains who through arranged marriages has gained control of a good deal of the real estate in the valley.

Rains reminds me a whole lot of Melvyn Douglas in Hud, an honorable man, possibly too honorable. Even though Prohibition is killing his business, he's surviving on selling his grapes to make jelly and grape juice, he won't sell to bootleggers to make illegal wine. Not like he's got control over what happens to his grapes once they are sold, but Rains has an exaggerated and somewhat naive morality.

Those arranged marriages aren't always the happiest ones either. Kent Smith is married to daughter Dorothy McGuire an iron willed lady, but who was in love with Anna Lee the wife of a son of Rains and the two of them had a not so discreet affair that produced Rock Hudson. He's the black sheep of the family and his parentage is just not discussed in polite company.

But all that makes it OK for Hudson to get romantically interested in Jean Simmons the daughter of another son of Rains who is over in the United Kingdom. She's come to the USA to be the arranged bride of another landed wine family Francis Bethencourt who once considered the priesthood.

Hudson has no such scruples about who the grapes are sold to. He organizes some of the smaller growers to sell their crops to bootleggers and some of those who resist get the usual gangster treatment. All this threatens to tear the Rambeau family apart and that's without going into what's going on with Rock and Jean.

I compared Claude Rains to Melvyn Douglas in Hud and truth be told Rock Hudson's part was probably better suited to someone like Paul Newman. But I don't think either of them could have lifted this story above the soap opera level. This Earth Is Mine tries for an Edna Ferber epic like quality and misses.

But for those of you who like this sort of stuff you could have seen all this and more on the Eighties prime time TV soap opera Falcon Crest where they had a matriarch of a wine growing family, Jane Wyman, who weekly was involved in some machinations trying to control all the people around her.

This Earth Is Mine does boast some beautiful scenery of the Napa Valley and Henry King as director does do his best to breathe credibility into an unbelievable story.