The Sea of Grass (1947)

One of the best films i have seen

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

As close to a complete disaster as any Tracy/Hepburn picture came as well as being Elia Kazan's least distinguished picture. It's a western of sorts with Tracy as the cattle baron who rules with a rod of iron and Hepburn as the wife who tries to stand up to him. It's well cast, (Melvyn Douglas, Robert Walker, Ruth Nelson and Harry Carey are also on hand), and superbly photographed in black and white by Harry Stradling but it never catches fire. The screenplay by Marguerite Roberts and Vincent Lawrence is leaden in the extreme and the film is just dull. Both Tracy and Hepburn are miscast and the film just drags on for over two hours and a few decades. Consequently it isn't much revived; a curio but not in a good way.

. . . and the Historical Record shows that SEA OF GRASS director Elia Kazan deserved AT LEAST six or seven hundred Real Life stitches for that many betrayals, back-stabbings, lies, and false accusations during the U.S. Rich People Party's Fascist Witch Hunts conducted by Sen. Joe "Mad Dog" McCarthy, R-WI. They say that it's always hardest to Rat Out your two or three best friends and closest relatives, and after that you want to feel like a Big Man on Hell's Campus by making up Crazy Crap about ANYONE who has ever crossed your path. "Criss Cross," as SEA OF GRASS star Robert Walker always said before Mad Joe's CIA\NSA Black Ops henchmen gave Poor Bob a fatal "drug reaction," making him just one more of Elia's Real Life "Fall Guys" after Kazan cast him as the lead fall guy in THE SEA OF GRASS. Mr. Walker clearly was "Sober as a Judge" working with directing giant Alfred Hitchcock as the star of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, not realizing that his off-screen doom was sealed four years earlier when he rubbed elbows with Giant Rat Fink Kazan in THE SEA OF GRASS. Double Criss Cross!

The Sea Of Grass is slow moving and talky, but not as bad as many have portrayed it. If I told you without cluing you in on the title I had a top-production 1947 MGM picture staring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Melvyn Douglas, you would be expecting a glossy white telephone movie with a love triangle and lots of high melodrama from the three stars. That's essentially what you get here, only replace the white telephones with elk antler hat racks, the swank park avenue apartments with rambling ranch houses, and the busy New York street scenes with a dusty, one-horse, Nineteenth Century New Mexico town. The Sea Of Grass is a soap opera dressed up as a Western. If that is what you are expecting, instead of a traditional shoot-'em-up, you may be much more pleased with it.The three stars deliver their usual stellar performances and three fine, textured character studies. Old, smoothie Douglas is particularly effective as a hard-edged attorney and later judge, cattle baron Tracy's stalwart opponent and Katherine's illicit lover, father of her second child. The large supporting cast shines, led by Edgar Buchanan and Harry Carry. Over rated Robert Walker is over-the-top as usual, but fun to watch. Production values are superb with terrific luminous, old nitrate black and white cinematography typical of the era, a rich Herbert Stodhart score, good, authentic costumes, great sets with some spectacular location scenery dovetailed in for long shots of Southwest grasslands and cliffs. Principally concentrating on relationships, the story moves along at a glacial pace, but the stars and an intelligent, if messy, script hold interest. Some of the dialog is a little preachy and overblown, but it is generally believable and satisfying. There is hardly any action until the last reels, and even then it is half-hearted and ultimately just peters out. The major subplot is the traditional Western theme of cattlemen versus homesteaders, but the eventual showdown comes early and is anti-climatic. Nevertheless, the movie is engrossing and enjoyable for the acting and the production values. It is refreshing to see a movie about the Old West that concentrates on decent real people and their real life problems instead of just dwelling on brawls between lowlifes who hang out in brothels and saloons.The Sea Of Grass is not bad, but not as good as it should have been with all it had going for it. Director Elia Kazan reportedly said he was ashamed of the picture, and he should have been. The overly slow pacing, lack of spark between Tracy and Hepburn (they were off-screen lovers!) , and other problems clearly resulted from his flabby direction. With three top stars at the peaks of their careers, an intriguing story, and a big budget, The Sea Of Grass should have been a much better picture. And it would have been if Raoul Walsh had directed it.

Young woman in 1880 St. Louis marries a cattle-baron who wields a powerful, occasionally unpopular and unfeeling hand. The couple settles into their New Mexico ranch-house, where she soon has a child, but the days and weeks of loneliness get to her and she shares in a flirtation with the smitten local attorney. Conrad Richter's novel becomes somewhat misbegotten vehicle for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, though the stars do make valiant attempts to lend believability to these characters. Richter's story is full of stop-and-start melodrama, which nearly sabotages the central relationship (particularly since screenwriters Marguerite Roberts and Vincent Lawrence have given all the best dialogue exchanges to the supporting players, many of whom ultimately fare better than the leads). Melvyn Douglas works very simply with Hepburn and they have an easy rapport; Robert Walker (as the grown son Douglas fathered with Kate) brings along a nice swagger; Edgar Buchanan (as the cook) and Harry Carey (as the local doctor) have seldom been so endearing. It's difficult getting a handle on Tracy's reserved, unimpressed Colonel. Blank-faced and slack jawed, Tracy puts a great deal of thought into this complicated man but walls himself up from the audience in the process. Hepburn, in her early scenes, radiates nervous warmth and good will, but turning her into a black-wearing drudge filled with regrets was probably a mistake. Overlong, not particularly satisfying...yet the film has something. It's handsomely-made, reasonably well-paced and is certainly unusual coming from this high-powered star-duo. **1/2 from ****