the rainmaker (before grisham)

last night i came home from the Canada Day festivities and curled up on the futon in the loft of the house i'm housesitting to watch the remainder of a 1956 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster. as many know, i'm an avid (obsessed? relentless? frightening?) Katharine Hepburn fan, and this is one of a handful of her films that i was still on my hit list. i was shocked and mildly surprised to find it in the "classics" bin at Classic Video yesterday afternoon.

the premise of the film is doubly strange. Kate plays a "plain" girl, named Lizzie, who grows up on a ranch in the US midwest in the aughts; by the numerous Tin Lizzies (the connection between her character's name and the no-frills, everyone can afford one car isn't lost on me) sprinkled around the set (that looked like something left over from a Gary Cooper western), i'm guessing around 1908. she has a disturbingly controlling older brother and a disturbingly stupid younger brother. the older brother has told her for many years that she is "plain" and destined to become an old maid. the younger brother takes up with the town hussie, Snookie McGuire who bleaches her hair and drives a bright red roadster (town guy: "she bleaches her hair" stupid brother: "she does not!" town guy: "she's bought two bottles of peroxoide since she came last week" sb: "well, i use peroxide to clean a cut" tg: "if she cut herself that much, she'd bleed to death"). Snookie also wears a little red hat with a pom pom, much like a knitted toque, and professes that she will only give the hat away to the man she gives her heart to (i kid you not). it was too similar to Anna K's little red handbag in my mind (the one Aritha Van Herk refers to in Places Far From Ellesmere as "the little red purse of her c*nt").

okay, i'm getting sidetracked. there's a drought on in the town of Three Point, and arriving to alleviate it is this mysterious huckster named Bill Starbuck (aka Burt Lancaster). Starbuck arrives on Kate's family's ranch and promises, for a fee of a hundred dollars to make it rain in twenty-four hours. Kate's father agrees to the bet and Starbuck sets about making the men in the family do crazy things so he can get Kate alone. her father is sent off to paint a giant white arrow pointing away from the house on the ground so the lightening, when it comes, will miss the house. Kate's younger brother is sent off to beat a giant bass drum three times whenever the mood strikes him (pardon the pun). the older, nasty brother is sent off to tie up the hind legs of a mule (that one made me laugh out loud; he returns later, limping and looking like he sustained a minor injury in the groin area). Starbuck eventually lures Kate out the tack shed where he proceeds to convince her to let her hair down, after telling her she is Mellisande, and they do the 1950s post-code equivalent of a roll in the hay.

as in all westerns, no matter their place in the cycle of the genre (enthusiasm for conventions, questioning of conventions, parodying of conventions), the sheriff arrives. he is going to arrest Starbuck and also to try and hook up with Kate. her father, knowing she's in the barn with Burt and unwilling to spoil what might well be his daughter's only brush with sexual gratification, tries to drive the sheriff off, but a mistimed exit on the part of both Kate and Burt throws the latter right in to the sheriff's clutches. Kate is, of course, transformed and Burt is looking quite smug. after convincing the sheriff that Burt has committed no crime (he promised rain and there's still a few hours left to go before he's proven to be a huckster), the sheriff agrees to let him go if he promises to leave town at once, without Kate. he does so, only after helping Kate to trick the sheriff into declaring his love, and on his way out is drenched in a downpour.

though Kate was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Lizzie, i just didn't get it. this isn't the Kate that i know from films like Woman of the Year (if you forget the last fifteen minutes in Spence's kitchen) and Adam's Rib. this is Kate post-Bogie and pre-Desk Set and in the transition, i think she got a little lost. everything that her star persona is supposed to signify: early feminism, pants-wearing and acidic wit mixed with a certain blend of sex appeal is stuffed into this role that in many ways just seems too small for her. it's like she spills over the edges in too many places (such as when she performs a fantastic mimic of the town hussy). she is told by Burt not that she needs to know and believe in herself (classic Kate), but that she needs to know herself and believe that she can be a woman. huh? in Pat and Mike Kate delivers a line about beating one's self in the game of life, which given the centrality of sports to the film is highly appropriate, and surprisingly not cliched. this time, N. Richard Nash saw fit to take the line, twist it and pull it from Burt's mouth so that the strength associated with Kate's star persona is uniquely adapted to heteronormative ideas of femininity. ick.

perhaps what made this viewing of The Rainmaker so otherworldly was the storm that was quite literally brewing outside my window. within 5 minutes of Burt riding off into the lightening storm there was a terrific cloud burst that moved in sheets past the open loft window. i heard the thunder rumbling in the sky as Burt charlataned his way past the sherriff; the windows were rattling when Kate's evil older brother was giving a long speech about the necessity of "protecting" her from men like Starbuck. i couldn't help but think of e's thirsty garden out back as the cracked plains of a 20th-century Hollywood indoor set changed to smooth brown terrain.

aside from the storm in real time, the film perhaps hit a little too close to home. this is the time of year when i distinctly stop feeling like a girl. what with morning practice down at the boathouse, and runs in the afternoon, i spend most of my time in strange form fitting athletic clothing (ah, the unisuit)that while it undoubtedly reveals that i'm a woman, also has magical powers of making me feel anything but. this is the point in the season where your legs start screaming from lactic acid build-up after a practice and where your arms, after a few months of constant strength building, stop fitting into the sleeves of certain shirts. while i love having what many of seemingly-envious friends call "guns", i also begin to feel a certain disconnect from my body as anything other than some strange muscle-y monolith. in the past, this has been incredibly liberating, but this year, for whatever reason, it hasn't. the place of indeterminancy that has come with slipping on my all-in-one (as the British say) has lost some of it's thrill for me. as a way of counteracting this, i've been doing things i haven't done in years: giving myself pedicures and, perhaps more shocking, manicures! using firming lotion -- hey, it was on sale at the drug store -- along with wearing heels (ouch) and sporting not a little red knitted hat with a pom pom, but a giant pink purse. i wonder what Aritha Van Herk would think of that.

i've also developed a fondness for the rain: walking in it, the smell of it, watching it bead against my window. last night there was a light sprinkling of it while we were waiting for the fireworks to start. while my friends sent one of our party scurrying home for the foul weather gear, i felt perfectly content on my patch of grass (in my absurdly white, fluffy skirt), feeling the rain against my bare arms. water and femininity/femaleness --- that's nothing new, as my friend confessingmermaid can tell you, but this is the first time i've really, really understood it.