THE SEA OF GRASS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 32

THE SEA OF GRASS

(M-G-M)

POR two hours Spencer Tracy, , as a cattle baron, tries to preserve the pasture-lands of the Western prairies from the attentions of the small

farmers (led by Melvyn Douglas, an Attorney) who want to parcel the territory out for agriculture. Mr. Tracy has made a good thing out of his monopoly and doesn’t hesitate to order intruders to be beaten or shot up; but he is activated, it would appear, by more than profit motive. There is, he declares, something Godly about Grass, and the mystic light of a nature-lover comes into his eyes when he looks at his waving acres. And, in the end, it would seem that God comes out on the side of the big herds. For, as the cattle-kings gradually lose their power and the homesteaders move in (backed by the Federal Government and the U.S,

Cavalry), the land is ploughed up, drained of its water and, with the passage of years, becomes a desert. Meanwhile, erosion has been going on also in the sphere of human relationships. Mr. Tracy, who took Miss Katherine Hepburn from a cultured home and planted her in the prairie as his bride, has proved himseif rather too stern and ruthless a husband for her entire liking; and for one night in Denver City she has succumbed to silken dalliance with her husband’s enemy, Attorney Douglas. This is very discreetly managed, to spare the censor’s feelings: the outcome is, however, that Mr. Tracy acquires a son whom he accepts and brings up as his own, but shows his displeasure by throwing the erring mother into the cold hard world. Thereafter, as the film uncoils its \weary length with the tortuous lethargy of an overfed python, Katherine Hepburn becomes greyer and more miserable, and both Tracy and Douglas also contrive to look as if the years were an intolerable burden to them. It isn’t until the son (Robert Walker), grown to wild manhood, has expiated his mother’s sin hy getting himself shot by the sheriff’s posse that we are allowed to go home. This sorrowful saga is acted, directed and photographed with great earnestness, some touches of imagination, and often with an eye for pictorial beauty. The scenes on the prairie have spaciousness, and Tracy and Miss Hepburn put more into acting their roles than the roles actually deserve. There is also a neat little performance at the end by Phyllis Thaxter, as the cattle-king’s young daughter. But Elia Kazan, the director, who made such a good job of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Boomerang, seems on this oecasion to be floundering. He can’t decide whether the film is primarily interested in Romance or Erosion; and after about an hour you begin to wish heartily that somebody would take a scythe to that Sea of Grass and cut it down a bit. |