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This Week: Rain (1932) Danny Huston’s grandfather Walter plays a mad preacher trying to break ‘fallen woman’ Joan Crawford in this exceptional artifact. A droplet of water on a sweating leaf. A pipe catching the rainfall and funneling it into an already overflowing wooden barrel. A glorious island sunset. From time to time, director Lewis Milestone uses these images to set the mood in his 1932 production of Rain. The shots recall the expressionistic approach of the European silent era, and reveal Milestone’s own tenure in Hollywood’s earlier non-talkies, which were only recently on their way out at the time of this fascinating film’s release. Based on the Somerset Maugham story Miss Thompson and adapted by Maxwell Anderson (Death Takes a Holiday) from a play by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, Rain concerns itself with a group ...