Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.Great Kate. Katharine Hepburn is the greatest. Here she is, just a few years after portraying the passenger of that African Queen, opposite that gritty, grimy Humphrey Bogart.Kate is wearing dresses here. This goes against her real life stereotype-shattering slacks, pants, man-clothes or whatever you want to call her personal wardrobe.Kate is Lizzie. Lizzie is a worn out spinster, wishing to be a Cinderella who is swept off her feet by a handsome prince from la-la land. She has romantic yearnings for a local snooze-fest, but he looks pretty boring to me.Voila! Along comes Burt Lancaster, portraying Starbuck. I immediately think, nowadays, of Starbuck's, the coffee purveyor. Anyway, this film's Starbuck is a dashing, swashbuckling snake oil salesman who says things like the stars shine for old maid Lizzie. Who else but Lancaster can play Starbuck? Starbuck is a loudmouth, wonderful, screaming and yelling dream come true, or so he thinks in his own mind.Awesome Burt. Burt Lancaster ain't no (bad English on purpose here) hard-boiled Spencer Tracy or dashing Cary Grant, but he is hubba-hubba in a very exciting way. Baby, the rain must fall, and neither Tracy nor Grant could ever have pulled it off.Lizzie is swept off her feet. The boring local guy is left covered by all of the dust in Starbuck's road. Katharine Hepburn, you have done it again. You have played many types of characters, and of course opposite several well known male lead actors. Starbuck, however, is one I remember very well. He is that sexy, risk-taking dreamer whom a woman really wants, deep down. A woman doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with a wrung-out old dishrag.Yes, the rainmaker makes the rain fall, in buckets as a matter of fact. Buckets the size of a house. This rainfall is huuuuuuuge. Starbuck (Lancaster) has made his prediction come true. He proceeds to sing, scream and yell that the rainfall has finally occurred. This is such a memorable scene.

My big brother took me to see this film when it first came out. He told me that it was about a con-man. I was waiting and waiting for at least one of the characters to be sent to prison ... conman = convict, get it ? Hey, I was just a kid, gimme a break ! Anyway ... "The Rainmaker" has since become one of my very favorite movies. The play "110 in the Shade" as well. I noticed in some of the other reviews that people expected the characters to burst into song. Well, in 110, they DO ! Katharine Hepburn IS Lizzy and Burt Lancaster IS Starbuck !!! The supporting players all inhabit their roles excellently. I cannot think of any who seems miscast.The story moves along and for me just WORKS! Looking for a good old fashioned romance with a twist ??? Look for and try "The Rainmaker" it's a good 'un !. !

Lizzie Curry (Katharine Hepburn) is a spinster taking care of her father HC and her two brothers (Lloyd Bridges, Earl Holliman). Deputy Sheriff File is a widower and holds a secret crush for Lizzie. The town is suffering from a drought, and everybody is desperate for water including the Currys. Then comes Bill Starbuck (Burt Lancaster) who claims to be a Rainmaker. Is he a huckster or is he real? More importantly, he could bring Lizzie out of her rut.Katharine is acting too big, but I guess it's the style of the era. Burt is masterful as the big showman. He has the big personality to pull it off. However his motivations are too unclear for the audience to root for fully. When you add Lloyd Bridges, there are truly big star power at work. And they can paper over any minor imperfections.

Based on a Richard Nash play and directed by Joseph Anthony, "The Rainmaker" stars Katharine Hepburn as an ageing spinster who's unluckiness with love have led to her becoming bitter, callous, cynical and skeptical of men. Mirrored to Hepburn is Starbuck, a character played by Burt Lancaster. He's a charming conman who promises - for a fee of course - to bring rain to the drought inflicted farmlands of superstitious suckers.The film delights in clashing Starbuck's optimism with Hepburn's pessimism. It's larger point, though, is that Hepburn's pessimism is both the result of her fierce intelligence and masks a deep, optimistic yearning. She's a hopeless romantic, always believes, is the film's true optimist, whilst it is Starbuck who cynically exploits others and has no faith in his abilities to conjure up rain. The film's end, of course, espouses a healthy merging of both stances.Today "The Rainmaker" is mocked for its wild, hysterical acting. It's a good example of a certain "type" of acting, though, and Hepburn's performance here was once frequently used to teach young theatre actors. Lancaster, meanwhile, is as over-the-top as always, his character imbued with the same manic energy which made his early action/adventure movies so memorable. Yes everyone in the film (Lloyd Bridges, Hepburn, Lancaster) is too old for their roles, the film's too theatrical, too on-the-nose, but Nash's script goes into some dark places, and scenes in which Hepburn lays bare her insecurities regarding her plain body, her fears of loneliness, her acceptance of her own virginity, are shockingly frank. Elsewhere the film does well to show how superstition and a kind of grim logic tend to both operate in the same space and facilitate each another. Starbuck's superstitions mask his weaknesses, his insecurity, his disbelief, whilst Hepburn's cold logic masks her longings, her fantasies, her private delusions. The film is ridiculously heavy-handed, but in its theatricality is able to sketch out regions which most art can't.7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.