This movie always leaves me smiling. Sure, it's not a masterpiece of cinema, and one has to be willing to go with the staginess of it (it was, after all, a play originally), but there's such an exuberance to the performances and gentleness to the story that the movie wins you over. In fact maybe there is something appropriate about the obvious artifice of the sets, since the movie is about the roles that people play and the dreams that they cherish. Certainly Lancaster's charming con man is a master of the orotund and theatrical spiel. Another haunting Alex North score that occasionally recalls some of the poignant themes that he wrote for "A Streetcar Named Desire."
Review of The Rainmaker
