L'albero della vita

John Wickliff Shawnessey (Montgomery Clift) and his girlfriend Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) are part of the 1859 graduating class in Raintree County, Indiana. He is taken with visiting socialite Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor) from a wealthy New Orleans family. Later, she returns to Raintree informing him of her pregnancy. He is honor bound to marry her.

This is trying to be a new Gone with The Wind but it's rather sluggish. The first two hours are a melodrama. Montgomery Clift is a functional heroic lead. Susanna's race heritage is somewhat interesting but her craziness distracts from its sincere seriousness. It could have been a nuanced dissection of race in the south. Like the blackface moment, the movie skirts the issue by blowing it up. Then comes a half hour of war epic. The war epic is not that epic. It's a lighter version of the burning of Atlanta. All in all, it isn't Gone with the Wind. It's only a breeze.