The Rains Came (1939)

***SPOILERS*** It was the amazing special effects, the first to win the Academy Award, that made "The Rains Came" worth watching far more then the schmaltzy and unconvincing romance in it that just about put the audience asleep trying to watch and absorb it. That between the straight as a arrow Major Rama Safti played by Tyrone Powers wearing a turban most of his time on the screen and an old flame of his the unhappily married Lady Edwina Esketh, Myrna Loy, who's bore of a husband Lord Albert,Nigel Bruce, is more interested in playing the horses then spending any time with her.For the first 20 or so minutes were tortured with the problems of the rich and well connected in 1938 British controlled India until the rains come and things start to get really wet and soggy for the entire cast. It's later when an earthquake hits the city of Ranchipur that what seems like the whole world is about to come to an end with the dam breaking and the water gushing out engulfing the entire city. With cholera breaking out it's only a matter of time when the entire population is to become extinct unless Major Rama, who's trained in medicine, can save the day as well as the people infected by it. With his now reunited girlfriend Lady Edina, who's husband Lord Albert was killed in building collapse, by his side first a scrub lady in the make shift hospital and then his assistant how could things go wrong! That's until Lady Edwina takes a drink of water from a glass that's been contaminated with Cholera and it's curtains for her.****SPOILERS**** With Major Rama doing everything possible to save his love Lady Edwina's life all he can do is just watch her go into a coma and slowly and peacefully expire along with all the other patients in the hospital that he's in charge of. With that out of his way in Major Dr. Rama planning to leave India with Lady Edwina for parts unknown like the Florida Everglades and the Grand Caynon all he can do now is take control of the battered and almost ghost town of Ranchipur and try to bring it back to life. Which the chain-smoking and soon to die, due to her excessive smoking habit, Maharani, Maria Ouspenskaya, appointed him mayor of so It would be his problem not hers!

Gosh, I'm soaked. That was some storm scene in "The Rains Came". Not only was there a rainstorm, it was compounded by an earthquake and subsequent flooding all over the place. Luckily it was only a movie and lucky for this movie, which was moving at a snail's pace until the storm. Beforehand, some of Hollywood's most dependable actors had been trying to move things along. There was Tyrone Power, George Brent, Myrna Loy, Henry Travers, Jane Darwell and the great Maria Ouspenskaya, just to name a few. I guess director Clarence Brown was trying to duplicate the pace of life in hot, stifling India, which necessarily must be slow.Then came the deluge. After some terrific flood footage, which earned the picture an Academy Award,the film becomes a soap opera, which normally turns me off. But this was different, it was absorbing and interesting, especially the dialogue between Power and Myrna Loy. The picture eventually becomes the property of Miss Loy, who gives one of her best performances while avoiding hysterics and descending into bathos.I thought this pulled the film out of the ordinary and eluded becoming another study in tedium and triviality. It was a good picture and I am glad I saw it. I never took a movie course, but I really appreciate watching professional actors acting their guts out.

Made the year of the really great movies of the Golden Years of Hollywood, "The Rains Came" was a quite remarkable achievement in 1939 - the photography and Special Effects (Flood and Earthquake) were extremely well done, and stand up quite well today. It was made in an era where Stars were the keys to a movie's success, and Fox brought together some big names for this Blockbuster. Heading the Cast is Tyrone Power as Major Safti, and he is perfect for the role, while Myrna Loy as Lady Esketh is well cast. George Brent had his best role ever, and the supporting cast included such gems as Maria Ouspenskaya, Nigel Bruce, Jane Darwell, Henry Travers and Joseph Shildkraut and believe me , these people do so much in adding to the quality of this film. The difference between Indian and Western cultures during the period of the Raj was well captured, and altogether moves along at a good pace, and makes for excellent entertainment.

In some made-up Indian province in 1938 we have a dissolute artist (Brent, who couldn't carry a picture to save his life), an up-and-coming doctor (Tyrone Powers in normal slick mode; he was that era's Tom Cruise), Brenda Joyce as a naive missionary's daughter (pretty, but unremarkable) and Myrna Loy as what they used to call "an adventuress". They're all having soap opera style problems until the middle of the picture, when monsoon rains come and wreck the province.Big budget for the time, but mostly pretty sleepy. The acting is unremarkable throughout: Brent is stiff and awful and unfortunately the lead, Powers is not that convincing as an idealistic doctor -- he'd have made a good dissolute guy, though. And while Loy in general is fine, nobody wants to see her in hospital scrubs picking up operating room waste. The two best performances are supporting ones, Nigel Bruce as Loy's older pain of a husband, and Ouspensky as the queen of the province -- though you have to get past her Yiddish accent.The story's over-drawn out, with some really bad speeches here and there and some extraordinarily tedious moments. The best part of the movie, and what it's probably most remembered for nowadays, is the special effects halfway through, all of which are very impressive. The movie picks up dramatically in those sections, before settling back down to sleepiness.RAINS is sort of an early Hollywood disaster picture: it's interesting to see that while nowadays a disaster picture is conceived as a kind of action movie, in the thirties it was more a subset of the soap opera. If you happen to catch it on television, it's worth seeing for the special effects, but other than that I'd pass.