A moody pre-Code tale of a puritan­ical and obsessive missionary (Walter Huston) in the South Seas trying to save the soul of a tart (Joan Crawford)– only to succumb to her allure. After run­ning on Broadway for three years, Sa­die Thompson, the leading character of Somerset Maugham’s famous story, had become cheaply popularised, the butt of lewd vaudeville jokes. Milestone had to “serious up” the act, so a script by Max­well Anderson, partly based on a stage version by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, balanced carnality with the director’s favourite theme of men and their environment.
Rain opens with tactile shots of rain­drops falling on soil and vegetation and follows a small group of travellers trapped in a poky hotel. Among them is Sadie, blasting out St. Louis Blues on her gramophone. The trumpet sound – growling with seductive, muted plungers – feels like an invitation to bed. This was far from comfortable for Crawford, who blamed her unease on the alien environ­ment: being away from the usual luxury of MGM sets and haunted by the iconic performances of the same role on stage (by Jeanne Eagels) and screen (by Gloria Swanson, directed by Raoul Walsh).
Long gone was the slick but straight­forward style of Crawford’s MGM films. Milestone introduces compositions that are idiosyncratic and expressive – even lyrical. He revamps his signature circu­lar mise-en-scène and 360-degree cam­era movements to frame Crawford as she entices the crowd and dances with a sail­or. After decades in the public domain, this restored version now reveals the true extent of Milestone’s vision and his at­tack on self-righteousness.

Ehsan Khoshbakht