Home from the Hill (1960)

(On Cable TV, February 2022) There’s something familiar to the point of boredom in the very 1950s-style small-town melodrama Home from the Hill. Technicolor cinematography can’t hide that it’s all convoluted histrionic without a millimetre of ironic distance. (There’s a reason why the near-contemporary Written on the Wind is far more beloved today.)  Oh, the film does have its traditional assets: Directed by Vincente Minelli, it features a cast with Robert Mitchum (in a role that anticipates his shift from tough guys to more elderly character-driven roles), veteran George Peppard and the young George Hamilton. MGM spared few expenses, giving this the big-budget colour treatment at a time when most such dramas were made in black-and-white. Mitchem is quite good here, using his tough-guy persona to project a character whose influence is steadily decaying. Still, the film does feel overly long and artificial: the southern atmosphere doesn’t impress, the scenes take too long to get to the point, the contrivances feel laboured and the rigidly mannered execution of the film is at odds with its raw melodrama. (But then again, that remains a problem with 1950s dramas: Hollywood did not yet have the neorealist tools to do them justice, and it would take until the New Hollywood of post-1967 to get there.)  It doesn’t help that there are several other films along the same lines as Home from the Hill, and that they usually have a distinct quality that makes them more memorable than this one. Fans of the actors, the style, and the melodrama may enjoy this, but everyone else won’t find much to remember.