Sea Of Grass (1947)

In the 1880s, a young St. Louis woman (Katharine Hepburn) travels West to marry a cattle baron (Spencer Tracy). But after their marriage, she has trouble adjusting to his way of life and his love of the land which she feels takes precedence over her. The idea of Tracy and Hepburn directed in a western by the great director Elia Kazan sounds intriguingly full of promise. Who would have thought that we would end up with this soggy piece of claptrap? We can see as soon as she arrives in New Mexico, they’ll eventually clash and the film offers no surprises. Based on the novel by Conrad Richter (though there have been major changes in its transition to screen), the film has the ambitions of an Edna Ferber generational epic along the lines of a GIANT or CIMARRON but Kazan‘s lack of interest is obvious. He needs the melodramatic punch he brought to EAST OF EDEN. No one is at their best here and I think most everyone would agree that it‘s the weakest of the Tracy/Hepburn collaborations. Kazan, on the other hand, has done worse. There‘s a rich underscore by Herbert Stothart. With Robert Walker (third billed but he doesn‘t show up till the film‘s last half hour), Melvyn Douglas, Phyllis Thaxter, Edgar Buchanan, Robert Armstrong and Harry Carey.