La mia terra

It looks like it was posted on you tube by Universal as their name appears in the bottom left hand corner. It is the full Cinemascope version and beautiful color. Excellent cast with names to remember. I have not seen this for many, many years but have been looking for it constantly. Now thanks, hopefully to Universal it is available for all to see again.

Locations in the Napa Valley give absolute realism to the production.

This is not available on video, as far as I can determine, and if it does eventually become available, be sure that the CinemaScope ratio is reproduced. Winton Hoch and Universal-International's master of the color cameras, Russell Metty, did some fine location work on this one, having been granted access to over a dozen properties in northern California's world-famed Wine Country. Their work made the use of Technicolor and CinemaScope more than worthwhile.

The story is a bit pulpy but it's not that badly spun out and, surrounding Mr. Hudson, U.-I.'s all-time box-office draw, there are some fine actors, including Dorothy McGuire, the always regal Claude Rains (playing an autocratic patriarch), and the lovely Jean Simmons, fresh from a number of above-the-title roles in Twentieth-Century Fox CinemaScope costumers. Hugo Friedhofer underscores the plot's halting progress with his usual taste and finesse. I'd forgotten he had written this score (I did see it first-run.) until a broadcast some time ago on American Movie Classics (failing, once more, to "letterbox" it. Wish I could sue them. One thing is for sure...I make a point to avoid purchasing anything offered by the advertisers who now clutter up their broadcasts ad nauseum.) Friedhofer's contribution lifts this film into the Class "A" category, something that cannot be said of many U.-I. releases during the Fifties.

When this film was about to be released a friend and I, up from southern California for a brief vacation in San Francisco, suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a stop on a press junket for this film. There, just a few feet away from where we stood, was Mr. Hudson towering over the diminutive Miss Simmons. I recall the patience they exhibited as they posed for numerous pictures, while answering reporters' questions. If there was any security around for the stars' protection, we weren't aware of it...a far cry from what we might observe in these paranoid times.

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.

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.