“They just live in the same house and kill each other a little at a time, and I’m in the middle.” – George Hamilton

The beauty of Home from The Hill is how it systematically works against our preconceived notions of what it will be, repeatedly asserting itself in new and dynamic ways. In the opening moments, Wade Hunnicut (Robert Mitchum), a local with major sway in the community, is out hunting with his entourage only to have someone take a shot at him.

The culprit is dragged out into the open. We expect it’s part of a feud, and it is, but he’s a jealous husband fighting for the honor of his wife. The implications are Hunnicut slept with her, and he in no way denies the accusations. Instead of doing anything rough to the boy, he simply sends him away with his rifle. There’s really nothing else to be done.

We already have a line on our main character. He is a hunter of animals and women with a blatant disregard for property lines where either is concerned. It’s an open secret in the community, and his wife Hannah (Eleanor Parker) certainly knows his reputation, so he hardly tries to lie about his “hunting accident.” She knows him too well for there to be any kind of pretense.

The script is another impeccable early offering from writing duo Irving Ravetch and Harriet Jacobs, so well remembered for their lifelong collaboration with director Marty Ritt. Their works are instilled with an appealing plainness — in every way American and in a manner that continues in the traditions of The Long Hot Summer. Mitchum and Orson Welles are different figures, but they both ably play gargantuan men with far-ranging celebrity.

The cadence and rhythm of the southern patois play to a vaguely familiar tune capturing the essence of authenticity. And mind you, these are before the days of Hud and yet somewhere in between Hunnicut and his right-hand Rafe (George Peppard), we find some of the rough shapes and edges of Newman’s later character.

As Home from The Hill comes into its own, the story progresses as a sprawling melodrama with a husband and wife battling over the future of their son Theron (George Hamilton). The only reason Hannah’s stayed in his house was the solemn word of honor that their son would be hers.

She has sheltered him from the ways of his father and as a result, he’s unquestionably a mama’s boy. It’s a territorial war as Wade suddenly takes an interest in him. Father and son forge a relationship founded on imparting his image of masculinity. Is it mixing metaphors horribly to say it’s part Shakespearian with Machiavellian strains?

Because Hunnicut wants a hand at sculpting his boy into a real man who can maintain his legacy. The first test he passes along as a rite of passage into manhood is the killing of a wild boar terrorizing his tenants. It’s a harrowing hunt taking him through briar and bramble with his pack of dogs. But his hand is sure and his grit resolute.

Soon the Hunnicut grounds are packed out with a large scale gathering, the delectable centerpiece amid the clamor and gaiety is a roast boar on a spit. Hunnicut is making strides to gain back his wife’s affections, which she has kept locked away from him. Meanwhile, their poor boy gets rejected by the father of his date (an unrecognizable Everett Sloane). We have an inkling it has something to do with the notoriety of Theron’s own father.

As George Hamilton goes through the arc of his story, I couldn’t help but compare him to Anthony Perkins. They not only share nominally similar boyish features, but Hamilton is also able to pull off a certain flightiness around women and an insecurity around everyone else.

One of the most curious scenes comes by way of the cemetery where all the locals are very merrily cleaning up the grounds of their kin. These are the burial grounds for the “Good Christians”, and then hidden away overgrown at “Reprobates Field,” Rafe cares for his own.

It hints at something only revealed in one of the film’s few scenes that fully oversteps its boundaries. Parker and Hamilton have it out in an impassioned back and forth that can only be described as histrionic. Even as he grows into manhood, he becomes increasingly disillusioned by the family of privilege he has been born into.

He thinks he loves Libby (Luana Patten), but how is he suppose to progress knowing the past indiscretions of his own flesh and blood? It crushes him.  The second overt moment of theatrics comes when his beau’s father comes to call on Mitchum trying to churn up a shotgun wedding. It feels peculiar within the sequence of events thus far. Still, it’s all part of small-town protocol, whether or not it relies on truth or merely local gossip.

Mitchum is hardly ever caught in such a state, nor George Peppard for that matter. The veteran actor is low with grounded core strength in every interaction, while Peppard is self-possessed in his own right. To their credit, they remain tempered and really stay ever steady in their roles. The patriarch exhibiting his unabashed egotism and the latter character embodying a necessary pathos in the film. He keeps it from cycling into a downward spiral of pure despondency.

While I have to admit it does feel like on a few crucial occasions Eleanor Parker overdoes her performance, most of her scenes opposite Mitchum are equally measured and beautifully layered with feeling. The history between them is rich even as their present is so resentful. However, the greatest accomplishment of the picture is how they hardly steal the movie.

As events progress, the brunt of the family drama falls equally on the shoulders of George Hamilton and George Peppard who capably carry the load placed on them. In fact, considering the trajectory of Peppard’s career, in particular, it amazes me his clout as a film star was never larger. Perhaps he arrived on the scene half a generation too late after the likes of Clift and Newman.

When we think of Vincente Minnelli at his most quintessential, it always entails musicals with lavish set designs and costumes. But more generally, he was fully adept at examining familial relationships and two of his best, and subsequently underrated efforts, are Some Came Running and Home from the Hill. What becomes apparent in this one is a sensitivity pervading even the potentially callous material.

Rafe is one vehicle, so pleasant and loyal — completely void of the malice or entitlement others are clouded with. His life is never defined by his bad breaks, but by the contentment he finds in his current reality, gradually carving out a fine life for himself.

Minnelli takes care with all his characters cultivating their romances on the screen into quantifiable entities even as it ties your guts in knots by the end. Because it goes out with some sense of family and a reaffirmation of relationship even on the rocky Texas soil of this picture.

There are so many avenues of rancor cropping up on all sides, it almost seems unbearable. Yet when it’s all said and done, with the drama and hate and killing, Home from The Hill hints at some semblance of peace.

4/5 Stars