Religious hypocrisy is always a meaty subject, and Rain is one of the most gratifyingly uncompromising takes on the issue. I've rarely seen a movie that presented Christian evangelism in such a bad light. I only wish the story was as convincing as the message. There's no reason it shouldn't be: the idea of a self-righteous missionary converting an initially resistant but secretly guilt-ridden free spirit, only to succumb to temptation himself, is perfectly plausible. It's just the way these developments are presented that fails to be credible. Rain is based on a play (which itself was based on a story by Somerset Maugham) and it uses a typical plot device of forcing a group of characters to share a small space, in this case a hotel on the Samoan island of Pago Pago, where the travelers from a boat are forced to wait out a rainstorm and a quarantine that prevents them from sailing on to their destination. Among the travelers is a powerful missionary, Alfred Davidson (Walter Huston), and his prim wife, and a conspicuously "loose" woman, Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford), who has evidently been a prostitute in Honolulu, but is now heading for a legitimate job in Apia. (Another couple, a thoughtful, enlightened doctor and his conformist wife, are present merely as observers in the drama.) Sadie attracts disapproving attention by entertaining American soldiers in her room with booze and jazz records (the gatherings seem quite harmless, however), and Davidson determines to "save" Sadie, or failing that, have her deported back to the United States, where she faces prison time for what she claims is a false charge. The final significant character is O'Hara, a good-hearted soldier who falls in love with Sadie and asks her to go to Sydney with him.
The main credibility problem is created by Davidson, and I think the fault lies more with the way the character is written than with Walter Huston's performance. He's so blatantly despicable from the get-go, so obviously smug, vindictive and uncharitable, that it's hard to imagine him succeeding as an evangelist. Everyone except his wife seems to see through him, including Sadie Thompson, who tells him, "When you were a boy I bet you caught flies and pulled their wings off." He should be charismatic, even seductive; instead he comes off as a rigid, charmless bully who barks at his intended converts without the slightest effort to appeal to them through persuasion or sympathy. So when Sadie does succumb to him, the effect is bizarre. One minute she's telling him off, the next she's reciting the Lord's Prayer as though hypnotized. He seems to have some occult power over her, which changes her personality entirely. If her sense of guilt and powerlessness had been built up from the beginning, her conversion could have been more realistic. Likewise, if Davidson's desire for Sadie had been signaled early on as the real source of his interest in her, it might be believable when he heads for her room with impure intentions, but instead lust seems to hit him out of nowhere, and he undergoes a two-minute transformation from pious Jekyll to leering Hyde. All these faults lie in the script, which feels schematic and didactic; things happen to prove a point, rather than because they're built into the characters and situations. This is a shame, because the story could have been more powerful.
Lewis Milestone makes a valiant effort to counteract the usual static effect of a filmed play. The movie opens with a beautiful montage of a tropical rainstorm, with a few heavy drops striking dry sand, palm leaves, still water, then coming thicker and faster until a rain barrel overflows in a white torrent. Throughout the film, cinematic interludes introduce the native world outside the hotel, with islanders dancing, singing and fishing; and the persistent torrential rains create an effectively claustrophobic backdrop (serving somewhat the same purpose as the wind in Seastrom's The Wind), though it doesn't help the audibility of the already muffled sound track. Milestone also sets his camera in motion, circling his actors and using tight close-ups of Sadie's bracelet-covered wrists and high heels. But nothing can disguise the essential staginess of most scenes, which are talky and rather slow-paced.
Fortunately, Milestone has a wonderful cast to carry these scenes. Guy Kibbee, usually cast as a lecherous buffoon, is subtle as the languid, live-and-let-live hotel proprietor, who reads Nietszche and has an obese native wife. William Gargan manages to make the idealized O'Hara natural and likable; at first he seems to be a cliché, the naïve farm boy, but he turns out to be experienced and independent-minded. Joan Crawford, as always, seems nervous and artificial, but this works since her character is playing a role: the tough, devil-may-care floozy, accessorized with trampy clothes, heavy make-up, cigarettes and low-down jazz. (Note the use of the St. Louis Blues, pre-Code cinema's ubiquitous motif for red-hot-mamas. See Baby Face and countless others.) She looks so much more beautiful after her conversion, when she appears lightly made-up in a plain black robe, the movie seems to be making an unexpected comment on the deceptiveness of angelic beautysince her pathetic, brainwashed state is also deeply disturbing. Her recovery is as unrealistically sudden as her conversion. She doesn't suffer at all from the shattering of her illusions; the spell is simply lifted, leaving her exactly as she was before. If not credible, at least this is satisfying. The celebration of an independent-spirited woman, and the elevation of tolerance over piety, is typical of pre-Code's mature, unsentimental attitude. Sadly, the unpopularity of this movie at the time showed that America wasn't ready for this viewpointif, indeed, it ever will be.
The main credibility problem is created by Davidson, and I think the fault lies more with the way the character is written than with Walter Huston's performance. He's so blatantly despicable from the get-go, so obviously smug, vindictive and uncharitable, that it's hard to imagine him succeeding as an evangelist. Everyone except his wife seems to see through him, including Sadie Thompson, who tells him, "When you were a boy I bet you caught flies and pulled their wings off." He should be charismatic, even seductive; instead he comes off as a rigid, charmless bully who barks at his intended converts without the slightest effort to appeal to them through persuasion or sympathy. So when Sadie does succumb to him, the effect is bizarre. One minute she's telling him off, the next she's reciting the Lord's Prayer as though hypnotized. He seems to have some occult power over her, which changes her personality entirely. If her sense of guilt and powerlessness had been built up from the beginning, her conversion could have been more realistic. Likewise, if Davidson's desire for Sadie had been signaled early on as the real source of his interest in her, it might be believable when he heads for her room with impure intentions, but instead lust seems to hit him out of nowhere, and he undergoes a two-minute transformation from pious Jekyll to leering Hyde. All these faults lie in the script, which feels schematic and didactic; things happen to prove a point, rather than because they're built into the characters and situations. This is a shame, because the story could have been more powerful.
Lewis Milestone makes a valiant effort to counteract the usual static effect of a filmed play. The movie opens with a beautiful montage of a tropical rainstorm, with a few heavy drops striking dry sand, palm leaves, still water, then coming thicker and faster until a rain barrel overflows in a white torrent. Throughout the film, cinematic interludes introduce the native world outside the hotel, with islanders dancing, singing and fishing; and the persistent torrential rains create an effectively claustrophobic backdrop (serving somewhat the same purpose as the wind in Seastrom's The Wind), though it doesn't help the audibility of the already muffled sound track. Milestone also sets his camera in motion, circling his actors and using tight close-ups of Sadie's bracelet-covered wrists and high heels. But nothing can disguise the essential staginess of most scenes, which are talky and rather slow-paced.
Fortunately, Milestone has a wonderful cast to carry these scenes. Guy Kibbee, usually cast as a lecherous buffoon, is subtle as the languid, live-and-let-live hotel proprietor, who reads Nietszche and has an obese native wife. William Gargan manages to make the idealized O'Hara natural and likable; at first he seems to be a cliché, the naïve farm boy, but he turns out to be experienced and independent-minded. Joan Crawford, as always, seems nervous and artificial, but this works since her character is playing a role: the tough, devil-may-care floozy, accessorized with trampy clothes, heavy make-up, cigarettes and low-down jazz. (Note the use of the St. Louis Blues, pre-Code cinema's ubiquitous motif for red-hot-mamas. See Baby Face and countless others.) She looks so much more beautiful after her conversion, when she appears lightly made-up in a plain black robe, the movie seems to be making an unexpected comment on the deceptiveness of angelic beautysince her pathetic, brainwashed state is also deeply disturbing. Her recovery is as unrealistically sudden as her conversion. She doesn't suffer at all from the shattering of her illusions; the spell is simply lifted, leaving her exactly as she was before. If not credible, at least this is satisfying. The celebration of an independent-spirited woman, and the elevation of tolerance over piety, is typical of pre-Code's mature, unsentimental attitude. Sadly, the unpopularity of this movie at the time showed that America wasn't ready for this viewpointif, indeed, it ever will be.