A Hatful of Rain has a strong acting and a great script. The film's biggest asset, however, is its maturity. Make no mistake, this is a serious movie and not just because it is about addiction. If you are familiar with other Zinnemann films, you have already been exposed to the unflinching psychological realism that defines his work. Zinnemann's films are honest. Where some directors would cut away from a difficult scene, Zinnemann zooms in. This may be one of the least escapist films you could find, not because it is a tragedy, but because it is a reality. There is some truth to the complaints about this film's staginess, but overall it delivers as as a great late '60s serious film.

I saw A Hatful of Rain and Bigger Than Life in the same evening, because they seemed to make the perfect double feature as they both dealt with addictions. (They had been on my short list of movies to see for a while.) I watched A Hatful of Rain first. It features good actors, who give good, thoughtful performances, but the film, on the whole, felt a little too stagy and like it was trying too hard to be self-important and/or preachy with its family dynamics. While it's rather respectful and tender in depicting Don Murray's morphine addiction and Eva Marie Saint's predicament in loving someone she can't altogether help, you begin to tire of its downbeat feel. Tony Franciosa is good as his brother who is tired of helping him out every single time and, at the same time, finds himself attracted to his wife. One may say that comparing this film to Bigger Than Life is not fair to this one, as I found it to be far superior to this, but, if you only have two hours to spare, watch Bigger Than Life first. Then, five minutes into this, you will see a world of difference, as A Hatful of Rain tries to be bigger than life.

Intense and harrowing family drama typical of 50's style New York film-making. At the time, Hollywood was caught up in the double-whammy of TV competition and Cold War scare, so programming from the West Coast tended to emphasize big screen spectacle and politically safe subject matter. On the other hand, films from New York City, such as On the Waterfront and Edge of the City, emphasized small screen black & white, with urban settings and grittier subject matter. Here it's drug addiction among a white-collar family ensconced in a Manhattan apartment. Hooked because of a war wound, Johnny (Don Murray) has a loving wife Celia (Eva Marie Saint), a loyal brother Polo (Anthony Franciosa), and an arrogantly insensitive father (Lloyd Nolan). There's real tension between husband and wife because Johnny is fearful of confessing his secret addiction. As a result, Celia feels neglected by his drug-created absences, while Johnny keeps losing jobs, and Polo ends up paying for his brother's habit. When Dad comes from Florida to collect promised money from Polo that he now doesn't have, events begin spiraling out of control.Needless to say, acting here is front and center stage. The cast comes through beautifully, especially Franciosa as the intensely conflicted Polo who's attracted to his brother's wife while providing Johnny the needed support. And it doesn't help that Dad has always favored Johnny even as Polo must keep that same brother's ruinous secret. Poor Polo, the stress may appear to be on Johnny and his addiction, but it's really Polo who's emotionally torn.This is not a movie for the depressed. Nearly all the scenes take place in the couple's rather drab apartment, except for a few street shots of Johnny trapped by Manhattan's towering impersonality. This is urban despair 50's style, when drugs and addiction were considered a strictly urban problem related to unwholesome types that thrived there. The darker skinned drug-pusher Mother (Henry Silva)) conforms to a popular stereotype of the time, along with his be-bopping confederate Apple (Bill Hickey), another popular stereotype. And when Mother says it's only business after threatening Johnny, we get a different perspective on the rise of post-war commercialism. (Why the lugubrious name "Mother" for a low-life drug dealer? My guess is that it characterizes in ironic fashion the dependent relation addicts have with their supplier.)The image that stays with me is a strung-out Johnny, hunkered down in his coat, drifting alone on the streets of Manhattan. It's a grim existential moment, especially for that upbeat decade. Anyway, the movie remains a dramatic powerhouse that still packs a wallop. And even that bane of 50's films, the required happy ending, is finessed in suitably ambiguous fashion.

An ex-soldier/now unemployed junkie in New York City keeps his addiction secret from his pregnant wife and his visiting father; his adoring brother acts as an enabler, and eventually things come to a boil when the guy needs a hit and can't scrape together the twenty dollars to get himself through the night. Playwright Michael V. Gazzo made a big splash with this story on the stage; he's also credited with work on the adaptation, yet the only fault of the film is the dialogue. The back-and-forth conversations between the addict and his wife or the addict and his father don't really ring true (the words are theatrical, as is the phrasing given by the actors). The brother, portrayed by Oscar-nominee Anthony Franciosa (reprising his Broadway performance), spends far too much of the first act drunk--in that movie-version of inebriated (stumbling, laughing, fiddling with his clothes, saying, "I'm drunk! I'm drunk!"). Still, Franciosa gets a good rhythm going with Lloyd Nolan as his father and Don Murray as his brother, although Nolan and Murray don't fare as well when they're on their own. Murray tries hard in the showiest part, and several of his big scenes are effective, but he's too clean, too dry and smooth to really convey the lows of a doper on the edge. Eva Marie Saint has the most under-developed role playing Murray's wife, yet she conveys the polite frustration of this woman with ease (which is often times harder than pulling out all the stops). Nice locations and gritty black-and-white cinematography help tremendously, and the picture is quite moving once the preliminaries are out of the way. **1/2 from ****