Last night I once again resumed my journey through the Twilight Time Blu-rays, with The Rains of Ranchipur (1955).
I could have sworn that I'd watched this one as soon as it was released in 2012. Well, not so. I knew I would have forgotten lots of it, but I kept waiting for familiar scenes to show up ... and they never did! By the time I was a third of the way through it I accepted that I'd completely conflated it somehow with some other movie, and here I was seeing it for my first time.
I enjoyed it, but I made myself get all the way through it before looking up anything about it. And oh my, what a reputation it has! Richard Burton in a turban and Indian skin coloring (which somehow fades later in the story)? That, and more. There's something for everyone of today and even yesterday to hate. I was nevertheless into it, but now I want to see the 1939 movie it's based on, and get THAT flavor of the story and the goings-on.
What I especially appreciated was that 1950s Fox "house style" of cinematography. I think it's a lusciously filmed picture, much of it drop-dead beautiful.
