Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

clanciai This early Joan Crawford and Walter Huston film aroused my interest as it was on the first major short story by Somerset Maugham and one of his most famous and notorious ones, and the film lived well enough up to the story. It is marvellously filmed on location in the south seas giving wonderful insights into the native life of only enjoying paradise, when it isn't raining...A ship on its way to Apia stays in Pago Pago and is detained because of some cholera risk, and among the passengers are Walter Huston, a preacher with his devoted wife, and Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson, an adventuress of doubtful reputation enjoying life and drinking directly out of the bottle. There are some merry aussies around her, she gets popular, while the preacher isn't happy about her high and noisy life and tries to 'save' her. Apparently he succeeds by sheer consistency but loses something on the way...It's a typical Somerset Maugham story with profound knowledge of human nature and of the ways of women, the dialogue is swell sustained all the way, the acting is perfectly natural, and there is nothing lacking in this film, which intensifies all the way almost amounting to a thriller. The conclusion is terrifically shocking, his stories always strikes home with a final effect, you can always rely on him, and I never saw a film on any of his stories that did not fully live up to his accomplished art of story-telling.

cloudsponge I love how the ending is open to interpretation. When the jazz music is pouring from the room after the death one assumes her religious conversion was planned and faked all along to entice and entrap the missionary on his own terms and she was gloating in her success at sticking it to him. But we see that her reversion to her old ways overnight could just be manifest from an attempted rape and resulting disgust. But can her wiles really be discounted entirely? She was a worldly woman and most likely knew quite well how to really get to the perv and could easily have planned what she did. Her shock and remorse at hearing the news of the death itself could be a further act or reaction to the way the news was delivered. "Oh, yeah, I should show some shock and remorse here, for their benefit." Both interpretations are possible: Her sincere religious conversion instantly cast off due to an attempted rape; or her faking the conversion and then toning down her display of successful revenge a bit.My main quibble with this movie was the portrayal by Walter Houston. I think we should have seen more suppressed and sublimated desire for her as time went on. But we see him coldly spouting off his brain-washing propaganda with pure hard ice in the same continuous way until that drum scene where he, too suddenly in my opinion, turned all penile imperative.His wife seemed to have understood all too well without our knowing why. Could she see his escalating obsession in the past few days? Did she hear love screams that final night? A battle repelling an attempted rape? Loud verbal abuse from Sadie castigating him for his vile hypocrisy?Personally, I like to think her conversion was faked. "I am alright in the daytime but I suffer so much at night, and need and wish for you to be there with me to support me with your comforting strength which I so need and want," as it were. You know, that wanting him, not so much in the daytime, but at night business.She might not have taken the Sydney escape route (via local boat transfers) the night before the death because her revenge was not yet complete. And chances are the ship would not be going directly to San Francisco from Pago Pago but would stop off in Honolulu where she could get off and meet up with old friends and maybe work old jobs. Or simply not get on the boat in Pago Pago in the morning. If she missed that boat from Pago Pago to S.F. neither she nor the governor could do anything until the next boat came - the one to Sydney. I felt that her reversion to the good-time girl was too complete and easily returned to not to have been there all along. And it just makes for a more satisfying story to think that she had such depth, acting skill, and knowledge of male psychology.

MissSimonetta I'm not much of a Joan Crawford fan, but she was great in this early talkie version of "Rain." Not as assured as Gloria Swanson in the 1928 version, but pretty close! She sells the character's swagger and crudeness while keeping her sympathetic and likable.The direction is great. Joan's entrance is creatively staged and shot.Walter Huston was a fantastic actor, though he does not manage to be as creepy as Lionel Barrymore had been in the silent version. Everyone else is mostly forgettable.This is not the best version of Rain, but it is still worth a watch and it's miles ahead of that awful and garish Rita Hayworth version in the 1950s.

evening1 Joan Crawford is mesmerizing in this extremely dated film on a time-honored theme -- men of stellar reputation and the women they lust after (think "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Measure for Measure").Unlike other reviewers, I don't think we need assume she's a whore here. (Crawford's character dresses sexily in a stereotypically tropical locale, and she's comfortable and casual with men, but to me that needn't equal prostitute.) Walter Huston should have been directed better. I got a little tired of his one-note, stentorian harangues. What's more, he might have shown more inner struggle before the penultimate scene in which he steals away into Crawford's chamber. Was I alone in finding his lustful act a bit of a non sequitur? Perhaps the best thing about this film, along with Crawford's insouciance, is its dusky mood. An expert depiction of atmosphere as a major character in a drama!