The Rains Came (1939)

George Brent: Tom Ransome

Photos 

Quotes 

• Lady Edwina Esketh : [Noticing a handsome Indian man at a nearby table]  Who's the pale copper Apollo?

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : Major Safti.

  Lady Edwina Esketh : Not bad - not bad at ALL.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : Well, don't waste your time. He's a surgeon and a scientist. Any interest he *might* have in romance is purely biological.

  Lady Edwina Esketh : You make him sound even MORE exciting.

• Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : [Describing Ranchipur to Lady Edwina Esketh]  See, in Ranchipur, the important things in life are the elemental things, such as crops, starvation, and weather. In Europe, when someone says "It looks like rain," in all probability, he's trying to make polite conversation. But here, where people die as easily as they're born, they're speaking in terms of life and death. You'll see what I mean, if you're still here when the rains come. You'll see them overnight turn the fields, the gardens and the jungles from a parched and burning desert, into a mass of green that seems to live, to writhe and to devour the walls, the trees and the houses.

• Lady Edwina Esketh : You sober enough to take me to the party?

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : [taking a drink]  Almost.

• Mrs. Simon : It's my last tea this season. We'll be leaving for Simla before the rains. You'll be going too, of course?

  Lily Hoggett-Egburry : Naturally. No one stays in Ranchipur during the monsoon.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : No? Only about five million people.

• Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : I hope I'm not keeping you from your guests.

  Fern Simon : Oh, they're not *my* guests. That's mother's idea of "high society." They're all excited because YOU'RE here.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : Really? Should I be flattered?

  Fern Simon : They say dreadful things about you...

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : [playfully whispers]  What sort of things?

  Fern Simon : That you're a drunkard, and a bounder, and a remittance man... They'll hang around you just the same, because your father was an earl.

• Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : Edwina... I'm afraid I've come to spill jam on your party dress.

  Lady Edwina Esketh : What do you mean?

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : The Maharani is sending you away in the morning.

• Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : [showing Lady Esketh the Maharajah's summer palace]  That's a Rembrandt. That's a Buddhist prayer wheel.

• Maharani : What is Lady Esketh doing at the hospital?

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : Every conceivable filthy and drudging task.

  Maharani : Yes, I suppose Miss MacDaid would have seen to that.

• Major Rama Safti : The world's not as bad as you think, Tom.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : No? Only trying to commit suicide as fast as it knows how.

  Major Rama Safti : I don't agree with you. Here in Ranchipur we're trying to make it a little better.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : The whole world?

  Major Rama Safti : OUR world - India in general, Ranchipur in particular.

  Thomas 'Tom' Ransome : I rather like the old place, just as it is.

  Major Rama Safti : You see it as an artist. I see it as an Indian. My people are crying for help. After centuries of disease and poverty and superstition.