Review of Home from the Hill (1960) by Lee M — 04 Jul 2016

Vincente Minnelli directed melodrama that's more soap opera than western. Robert Mitchum plays the rich womanizing ranching family patriarch and Eleanor Parker plays his wife who stays with him out of obligation and a bargain they struck that she would be allowed to raise their son without Mitchum's interference.

However, their now grown son, George Hamilton, is a mama's boy and awfully dependent upon his mother, so Mitchum decides it's time that he makes Hamilton a man. Mitchum takes him on hunting trips and such with his loyal and macho ranch hand George Peppard, who we later find out (SPOILER ALERT) is actually Mitchum's bastard son who seeks the fatherly attention Mitchum is suddenly bestowing upon Hamilton.

There are other pregnancies, rival rich families, secret romances, and all sorts of melodrama that you'd expect from a glossy Minnelli MGM production. That glossy Minnelli look and soapy story elements seem oddly out of place in this butch western setting, but that is a small quibble.

Director George Stevens did this much better with "Giant" but I'm a sucker for Minnelli soap operas and I did quite like this film, even if it was a bit overlong.