Home from the Hill (1960)

There's something very Greek about this compelling story as one generation visits its sins upon its offspring. Though some of your reviewers pointed out that the Rafe/Peppard character does not appear in the original novel for the life of me I can't figure out what the story would have been like without him. The development of his character and his gradual integration into his father's affection and respect is certainly one of the film's mainstays and very attractive features. If there was no Rafe character in the novel then I can only conclude that the movie script writers improved the story greatly.I found the emotional relations between the different pairs of characters endlessly fascinating and gripping: Mitchum/Parker and their icy 18 years of separation; Theron/Rafe and their finding each other as brothers; Parker/Hamilton as the over-protective mama and her boy; Theron/Libby and their sensitive and beautifully scripted love scenes followed by their heartbreaking estrangement as Theron chooses his mother over his true love; Rafe/Libby and their equally brilliantly scripted encounters one after the other from Rafe's quiet admiration of Libby at the car washing scene to Libby's unburdening of her soul to Rafe in the restaurant and their final happiness in marriage; Mitchum/Libby's father as the one's cold dismissal of the other is eventually returned by the father's revenge and his assassination of the one he thought had shamed his family. The beautiful and emotional moments just keep coming at you one after another.Everyone's acting was brilliant, Kaper's score was understated and beautiful, Minelli's directorial pace superb, and the scripting outstanding. Having never heard of this movie before but having sat enthralled throughout its almost three hours I thought this one one of the finest movies I have ever seen.

Southeast Texas game-hunter, a married man with a reputation for womanizing, wants to get a hunting rifle into the hands of his son, whom he fears is becoming a mama's boy; meanwhile, a young, swaggering associate of the hunter teaches the mild-mannered lad about girls. In the earliest portions of "Home from the Hill", director Vincente Minnelli nearly reconstructs a rural variation on "Tea and Sympathy" (which he also directed); after a muddled, melodramatic opening, the film becomes less a coming-of-age story than a tale of family secrets revealed, and the second-half of the picture is surprisingly serious and bracing (though rendered in typically glossy M-G-M fashion). George Peppard and George Hamilton are both excellent, far outshining the unhappy adults (Robert Mitchum--miscast--and Eleanor Parker, who keeps fiddling with her costumes as if she were a maiden lady). Peppard, in particular, has some wonderful physical bits of business, convincingly playing a small-town bachelor stud toying with the idea of growing up. Minnelli allows the dialogue-heavy plot to unfold carefully, slowly, but those who stick with it will find a rewarding drama of honor and responsibility. Constance Ford is terrific in small role as a bar floozy, and Everett Sloane gives a highly sympathetic turn as a businessman with family troubles of his own. **1/2 from ****

If you read a synopsis of the movie, you'd say ho-hum. A loveless marriage. An unacknowledged illegitimate son. An unwanted pregnancy. A scandal-mongering small town. But, thanks to good writing, direction, production values, and acting (especially by Robert Mitchum and George Peppard), this movie holds your interest for its 2 1/2 hour length.I was impressed by the two hunting scenes, finding them vivid and exciting, even if, as one reviewer says, they were not really shot in the wild.George Hamilton starts out as a mama's boy, soft and overly sensitive, and after learning to shoot and hunt and tracking down a fierce wild boar, he still seems like a mama's boy. Blame it on his facial expression, perhaps.The Robert Mitchum character's insistence on his son's cultivating manly virtues (for want of a better term) and abandoning boy's preoccupations like stamp and butterfly collecting is likely to offend some viewers, but he is only being true to the background portrayed in the story.

Spoiler. This has to be one of Minnelli's worst films. First of all its way too long and not very compelling. The performances are OK, Mitchum was always good, but Eleanor Parker was a very limited, if lovely actress. The plot is silly and unbelievable even for 1960 (which was still really the 50's)and full of stereotypes i.e the town tramp,(played by the very fine character actress Constance Ford, the loyal "negro" servants etc. For an outdoor type of film its very claustrophobic with fake studio sets representing the woods, and is especially glaring in the opening shot. Also the film was so implausible like why the hell did Eleanor Parker stay around if she was so miserable being married to Mitchum, and can you really go along with Preppard agreeing to marry the poor dumb pregnant girlfriend of George Hamilton who walks into the sunset after killing Everett Sloan.