Don't listen to the negative reviews

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

If, like me, you consider Vincente Minnelli one of the all-time great directors then you have to accept that his melodramas are just as good as his musicals. In the fifties and sixties he made a series of heightened melodramas, grandly operatic in tone and shot largely in Cinemascope and colour, (the 1952 "The Bad and the Beautiful, which he made in black and white, is perhaps the most famous of his non-musicals but it's a piece of Hollywood hysteria I've never actually liked). If the subject matter of most of his films gravitated towards soap-opera, the style he applied and the look of these pictures was extraordinary.Minnelli was fundamentally a designer and Cinemascope gave him the opportunity to use the screen as a vast canvas in which he could place his characters. A lot of these films are among the most visually stylish of their period. Of course, he was also blessed with very strong scripts and outstanding casts. He made "Home from the Hill" in 1960 and it's not as well-known as some of his other films. It doesn't deal with as 'controversial' a subject as homosexuality like "Tea and Sympathy", the same level of hysteria as "The Cobweb", the deep intensity of "Some Came Running" or the insider knowledge of the movie business of "Two Weeks in Another Town" but it remains a hugely exciting piece of cinema nevertheless.It's a family drama and a surprisingly intimate one considering its two and a half hour running time. Robert Mitchum is the small-town patriarch who can't keep it in his pants and is living in a loveless and sexless marriage with Eleanor Parker. Their son is George Hamilton, initially a momma's boy but taken under his father's wing when he turns 17 and George Peppard is the young rough-neck who, it turns out, is Mitchum's illegitable son.The very fine screenplay was by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr from a novel by William Humphrey that veers from small-town soap opera to faux Greek tragedy complete with a Greek Chorus of gossipy old men and like almost everything Minnelli did he handles the interplay between his characters with the same brio as he handles the widescreen and his use of colour. It's also beautifully played by the entire cast with Peppard proving to be the revelation. It may be the least revived of his films but it's still unmissable if you do get the chance to see it.

I understand a number of people enjoyed this but I found it long and a little boring. It's a story of family intrigue, a kind of interactional drama, in northeast Texas. Robert Mitchum is the head honcho in this small town, given to such manly pursuits as shooting animals and bedding the wives of other men. He's highly respected. Except by the men whose trust he's betrayed, one of whom offs him appropriately.His wife is Eleanor Parker, who dislikes him, has kept her bedroom door locked, and taken over the raising of their child, George Hamilton, as tan as ever and sounding like Tony Perkins. Hamilton's bedroom is "a boy's room", with rocks, a butterfly collection, and books. BOOKS! When Hamilton is seventeen, Mitchum decides it's time to make a man out of him. He takes the young man to HIS room, filled with the apparatus of killing and adorned with the heads of dead animals he's killed. Mitchum also has an good-natured illegitimate son, George Peppard, with whom he hangs around but doesn't treat especially kindly. Peppard lives in a hut with dogs.I can believe that this is the way life was led by a wealthy family in northeastern Texas in the 1950s, but the production values are cheap and the story sprawls and sprawls. If I wanted to see another sprawling story about a rich family in Texas, I'd watch "Giant" again. If I wanted to watch a superbly done story of a moderately wealthy Texas family, I'd go back to "Hud." The characters' conflicts are realistically portrayed. They teeter on the edge of stereotypy without quite falling into the trap. But it's hard to like much about Mitchum. His idea of being manly, aside from the hunting and fishing, is to shout his lines. He's best when he holds it back and only allows it to peep out once in a while.

Robert Mitchum is a rich and powerful man. He's also a 'man's man'--tough, adventurous, a great hunter and one who likes to lead a manly life. However, he also has the morals of a sewer rat--and frequently sleeps with women--even though he's married (to Eleanor Parker). As a result, their marriage is VERY strained and they are distant. They have a son (George Hamilton) and the parents both want to shape him into their sort of man. As for Hamilton, he desperately wants to be respected by his father and be the manly sort. He has no idea what sort of reprobate his father is--that is, until he asks out a nice girl and her father flatly refuses to allow this. The pair decide to start dating on the sly.As Hamilton is molded into a man like his father, he's told by his father to be mentored by one of his most trusted employees (George Peppard). Eventually, however, Hamilton learns that this 'employee' is actually his dad's illegitimate son as well what sort of man his father really is--and it sends him off the deep end. When his girlfriend becomes pregnant, what sort of man will Hamilton turn out to be? And, what will become of this rich but no account family? And what about George Peppard--what about him?! This is a glossy soap opera, though it may not appear so when it begins. In many ways, it's in the same tradition as "Peyton Place" and "A Summer Place"--enjoyable, glossy, very well-acted and a bit trashy--but mostly enjoyable. It ended very well--very, very well. And, the film has a lot to say about what it means to be a man...a REAL man.

If you read a synopsis of the movie, you'd say ho-hum. A loveless marriage. An unacknowledged illegitimate son. An unwanted pregnancy. A scandal-mongering small town. But, thanks to good writing, direction, production values, and acting (especially by Robert Mitchum and George Peppard), this movie holds your interest for its 2 1/2 hour length.I was impressed by the two hunting scenes, finding them vivid and exciting, even if, as one reviewer says, they were not really shot in the wild.George Hamilton starts out as a mama's boy, soft and overly sensitive, and after learning to shoot and hunt and tracking down a fierce wild boar, he still seems like a mama's boy. Blame it on his facial expression, perhaps.The Robert Mitchum character's insistence on his son's cultivating manly virtues (for want of a better term) and abandoning boy's preoccupations like stamp and butterfly collecting is likely to offend some viewers, but he is only being true to the background portrayed in the story.