The Rainmaker

Joseph Anthony's 1956 film works from N. Richard Nash's adaptation of his own play and makes no secret of its stage origin. In a drought-stricken town, Starbuck, a con man claiming he can bring rain, enters the life of Lizzie Curry, who is considered destined for spinsterhood. The subject is not rain but how a woman sees herself and how that view is built out of other people's eyes. Katharine Hepburn plays a character twenty years younger than herself, a gap criticised at the time, though the performance brought an Academy Award nomination. Burt Lancaster's Starbuck is a figure who does not hide his fraudulence yet whose words work. The resolution, tying the woman's worth to what a man tells her, looks problematic from here. Who it's for: viewers who like classic Hollywood adaptations of plays, the meeting of Hepburn and Lancaster, and 1950s character drama. Who it's not for: anyone troubled by a woman's transformation resting on a man's approval, or who will find the stage-derived density of dialogue too much.