Rain (1932)

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent, smart action film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This early Joan Crawford and Walter Huston film aroused my interest as it was on the first major short story by Somerset Maugham and one of his most famous and notorious ones, and the film lived well enough up to the story. It is marvellously filmed on location in the south seas giving wonderful insights into the native life of only enjoying paradise, when it isn't raining...A ship on its way to Apia stays in Pago Pago and is detained because of some cholera risk, and among the passengers are Walter Huston, a preacher with his devoted wife, and Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson, an adventuress of doubtful reputation enjoying life and drinking directly out of the bottle. There are some merry aussies around her, she gets popular, while the preacher isn't happy about her high and noisy life and tries to 'save' her. Apparently he succeeds by sheer consistency but loses something on the way...It's a typical Somerset Maugham story with profound knowledge of human nature and of the ways of women, the dialogue is swell sustained all the way, the acting is perfectly natural, and there is nothing lacking in this film, which intensifies all the way almost amounting to a thriller. The conclusion is terrifically shocking, his stories always strikes home with a final effect, you can always rely on him, and I never saw a film on any of his stories that did not fully live up to his accomplished art of story-telling.

Set in Pago Pago, American Samoa, a group of travellers find themselves stuck for a couple of weeks when the boat to Apia is delayed. Holed up in the general store tensions soon start to rise as a group of bible-bashing reformers take an instant dislike to good time girl Sadie Thompson. Offended by the way she plays music and has men in her room they try to get her kicked out of the establishment; when that fails the try to get her deported on the next ship out. When she is told she must take the next boat out she pleads with the puritanical Alfred Davidson to be allowed to stay a couple more days to catch the boat to Sydney rather than going to San Francisco; where she would have to spent three years in the penitentiary for a crime she insists she did not commit. He states that if her soul is to be saved she must do her time whether innocent or guilty. He starts reciting the Lord's Prayer until it appears that she agrees with him.This 1932 film clearly has religious hypocrisy it its sights as Davidson and his fellow travellers clearly have absolute views of right and wrong… anything that they don't like is wrong and anybody who does such things is a sinner doomed to eternal damnation… no 'love the sinner; hate the sin' for them. Walter Huston does a fine job portraying Alfred Davidson; a truly vile character; a bully and a hypocrite. Joan Crawford is just as good as Sadie; she may have done some wrong in her past but she is a far more sympathetic character than any of the do-gooders who want rid of her. The rest of the cast is solid enough. The constant rain that keeps people indoors for most of the film helps create a claustrophobic atmosphere. As the ending approaches it looks as though it will be rather depressing but thankfully we get an ending that is best described as 'most satisfying'.

I'm not much of a Joan Crawford fan, but she was great in this early talkie version of "Rain." Not as assured as Gloria Swanson in the 1928 version, but pretty close! She sells the character's swagger and crudeness while keeping her sympathetic and likable.The direction is great. Joan's entrance is creatively staged and shot.Walter Huston was a fantastic actor, though he does not manage to be as creepy as Lionel Barrymore had been in the silent version. Everyone else is mostly forgettable.This is not the best version of Rain, but it is still worth a watch and it's miles ahead of that awful and garish Rita Hayworth version in the 1950s.

Joan Crawford is mesmerizing in this extremely dated film on a time-honored theme -- men of stellar reputation and the women they lust after (think "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Measure for Measure").Unlike other reviewers, I don't think we need assume she's a whore here. (Crawford's character dresses sexily in a stereotypically tropical locale, and she's comfortable and casual with men, but to me that needn't equal prostitute.) Walter Huston should have been directed better. I got a little tired of his one-note, stentorian harangues. What's more, he might have shown more inner struggle before the penultimate scene in which he steals away into Crawford's chamber. Was I alone in finding his lustful act a bit of a non sequitur? Perhaps the best thing about this film, along with Crawford's insouciance, is its dusky mood. An expert depiction of atmosphere as a major character in a drama!