This Earth Is Mine (1959)

A sprawling saga of a wine making dynasty set in the Napa Valley of Northern California during the last days of prohibition. A young woman (Jean Simmons) arrives from England to stay with her grandfather (Claude Rains), the patriarch of the clan, where she finds a conflict between the grandfather and her cousin (Rock Hudson), carrying the burden of an illegitimate birth, about the future of the vineyards. The cousin wants to sell the grapes to bootleggers for booze but Rains refuses to have his grapes used for illegal purposes. Based on the novel THE CUP AND THE SWORD by Alice Tisdale Hobart and directed by Henry King (SONG OF BERNARDETTE). This melodrama suffers from a muted restraint which ill serves the genre. The structure cries out for a more ambitious film (something along the lines of GIANT) but the plot seems splintered as if pieces have been left out. I haven't read the 1942 source material but perhaps the book has been bowdlerized. Hudson seems inadequate to the demands placed on him in the role but the rest of the cast does well enough especially Dorothy McGuire as Rains' strong willed daughter. The score is by Hugo Friedhofer. With Anna Lee, Kent Smith, Ken Scott and Cindy Robbins.