Sea of Grass Worth Reviving?

 

 

 

Sea of Grass (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan

Lowe’s Inc. 127 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★

 

Sometimes it’s a good idea to “sit” with a film after you’ve seen it. I was fairly blasé after viewing Sea of Grass but the more I thought of it, the more I liked it. My reaction was apparently par for the course. Critics were lukewarm when it was released in 1947, yet audiences flocked to it and made it the most successful Hepburn-Tracy (H-T) film of all time.

 

I think I was initially hesitant because it was an H-T movie. It was hard to imagine Katharine Hepburn as a gal from St. Louis or Spencer Tracy as a New Mexico cattle rancher who loves waving fields of grass. Hepburn had the ultimate Connecticut Yankee blue-blood accent and Tracy–though born in Wisconsin–was a New York/Los Angeles sort of guy. In the film, Lutie Cameron (Hepburn) comes from a proper St. Louis family and is set to marry Col. Jim Brewton (Tracy) when she gets a telegram telling her to hop on a train to get hitched on Brewton’s Salt Fork ranch instead. To say that she’s less than impressed by Salt Fork is putting things mildly. She’s even more alarmed by Brewton’s brusque and imperious manner, and is shocked when she meets local Brice Chamberlain (Melvyn Douglas) who warns her that Brewton is a hard man. To prove his point he takes her to the local court house where Brewton is trying to run off a settler on government land he wants for grazing.

 

Lutie gains more insight into Brewton’s thinking when he takes her to gaze out upon the empty prairie and waxes rhapsodic about the power of the land and the need to conserve it. But make no mistake; Brewton is a cattle man, not Teddy Roosevelt reincarnated. He wants no part of homesteaders moving onto the grasslands and is unaffected by Lutie’s pleas that it will make Salt Fork more lively. Call it visions of St. Louis versus those of Petticoat Junction! Lutie errs badly when she convinces Brewton to allow a family to build a sod home on land he sees as his. Despite Lutie giving birth to a daughter, Sara Beth, the question arises: Can this marriage be saved?

 

Maybe not. Lutie decides to flee to Denver for a time. There she “bumps into” Brice. Nod, nod, wink, wink. Lutie will come back to Salt Fork where she gives birth to a son, Brock. Chamberlain returns as well, is elected a federal judge to settle land disputes, and in his own way is as intractable as Brewton. Acrimony sends Lutie back to St. Louis, where she consults a lawyer. Can she get out of her ill-advised match? Maybe, but there are attached strings. (Aren’t there always?)

 

Director Elia Kazan shows a deft hand by taking a proverbial tuck in the script. Instead of following Brewton and Lutie though their respective trials, triumphs, and tribulations, Kazan subtly shows us that years have passed. When we pick up the story, Sara Beth (Phyllis Thaxter) is a young woman and Brock (Robert Walker) is an angry reckless hellion. This lapse in a family saga was actually quite bold given the Hollywood Code of the day that had definite rules in place about the sanctity of the family. You’ll have to watch to see how Kazan extracts himself from the corner into which he has painted himself.

 

It's undoubtedly a personal matter whether you buy into the idea of a H-T Western. There are, though, several things to recommend giving it a try. First of all, not many actors have ever done stubborn as well as Tracy, so that part rings true even if you don’t think he belongs in cowboy boots or wearing a long string tie. Second, cinematographer Harry Stradling imbues the prairie with great majesty. Wide shots of winds rippling across vast expanses of grass indeed invoke the “sea,” and are enhanced by shooting in black and white. Note what Kazan and Stradling do with shadows, sky enhancements, and underlighting.

 

Finally, there is relevance in this 77-year-old film. Once we move away from the war of wills between Lutie and Brewton and ponder the core of their clashing worldviews–civilization versus the fragility of ecosystems–who is right, kind-hearted Lutie or hard-as-nails Brewton?

 

Rob Weir