Get ready for an epic love quadrangle aquatic adventure with Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind. Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, John Wayne, and Susan Hayward all sneak behind each other's backs, deceive, seduce, and fall in love for real. And it takes two hours to sort it all out!
It's a little complex, though, and miraculously at the same time, a little tedious. It's as if screenwriters Charles Bennett, Jesse Lasky, Jr., Alan Le May, and Jeanie Macpherson, wanted the audience to take so long to figure out who's who and what they're doing that it would stretch the running time out. But, if you like large-scale adventures with lots of boat scenes, you might not mind. It reminded me of Tap Roots in a way, an attempt to recapture the epic splendor of Gone with the Wind but not really succeeding. You can tell everyone in this movie thinks it's an incredible blockbuster-which, to be fair, it was at the time-but nowadays with so many ship movies out there with more up-to-date special effects, it doesn't feel the same. The famous crane shot in Gone with the Wind doesn't feel the same today, either, so if you like stepping back in time, and you're totally riveted by hurricanes and shipwrecks, you might like this one.
It's a little complex, though, and miraculously at the same time, a little tedious. It's as if screenwriters Charles Bennett, Jesse Lasky, Jr., Alan Le May, and Jeanie Macpherson, wanted the audience to take so long to figure out who's who and what they're doing that it would stretch the running time out. But, if you like large-scale adventures with lots of boat scenes, you might not mind. It reminded me of Tap Roots in a way, an attempt to recapture the epic splendor of Gone with the Wind but not really succeeding. You can tell everyone in this movie thinks it's an incredible blockbuster-which, to be fair, it was at the time-but nowadays with so many ship movies out there with more up-to-date special effects, it doesn't feel the same. The famous crane shot in Gone with the Wind doesn't feel the same today, either, so if you like stepping back in time, and you're totally riveted by hurricanes and shipwrecks, you might like this one.