For a film that is influenced by a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, and even begins with the stanza that inspired the title, Home from the Hill is an awfully prosaic work that really doesn’t contribute much to an already saturated field of Southern melodramas that are far more overwrought than they are impactful, and which tend to play on audience sympathy far too often as a means to distract from the more troubling issues that pervade these stories. Vincente Minnelli was responsible for some of the most beloved films in cinema history, but it almost goes without saying that this is one of his lesser-efforts, a film that pales in comparison to even some of his most divisive work. By no means a travesty of a film, but rather one that borders on being a complete bore more than anything else, there’s very little to say about Home from the Hill other than to comment on the fact that it’s filled with a few lovely performances, a relatively interesting story and some visual flair that saves it from being entirely unsuccessful. One of the quintessential examples of a promising idea failing to manifest into a great idea, Home from the Hill has some enormous problems, but it ultimately resolves them all through being relatively pleasant and endearing when it needs to be, telling a compelling story without too much difficulty – the problem is the emotions of emotional authenticity fall flat, leaving us grasping at what paltry material Minnelli provides in this quaint but forgettable family saga that reaches for greatness, but doesn’t have the basis to ever come close to achieving it, falling just short of reaching any of the discernible potential it promises at the outset.

It’s not difficult to see the appeal of a film like Home from the Hill at the time of its release – it’s a large, elaborate melodrama made by an incredibly popular director, who was working with major stars in roles that would do nothing but function as a showcase for their talents, and a story that would resonate with many people, the plot being only vaguely specific enough to allow anyone in the country to feel some sense of alignment with these characters. The problem comes when we step away from this geographical and temporal context, and look at it from a very different perspective. To call this film lazy is inappropriate, since there is a lot of effort in what Minnelli did to bring this complex premise to the screen. It’s equally difficult to convincingly call it outdated, since there’s really nothing in this film that specifies a particular time in history (with these flaws being found only in secondary elements such as the presence of African-American characters who are constructed as thinly-veiled caricatures that were still sadly prevalent at the time). The problem comes in the very simple fact that Home from the Hill is just not all that good at telling the story it endeavours to tell. It’s not a bad film by traditional standards – its got a story that is easy enough to follow, with the exception of a few unnecessary narratives turns that could’ve easily been elided had there been an increase in the self-awareness necessary for the film to actually meet the impossibly-high expectations – and whether these are set by the film itself, or by audiences who go in expecting to be entirely blown away by what we see reflected on screen, the truth is that Home from the Hill is just not particularly essential in any conceivable way.

Ultimately, we can just reduce all the problems with Home from the Hill to the fact that it just gets lost in a sea of similarly-themed films, failing to stand out beyond a few memorable moments. One can easily name over a dozen films produced in adjacent decades that told almost identical stories, and boasted equally-impressive casts – while it’s never a good enough excuse to chalk up a film’s problems to unoriginality (and to its credit, there are some very powerful moments in this film), it does become a factor when considering how this deviates from other films. Minnelli was a gifted filmmaker, and while I’m hesitant to say he was out of his depths with this film (since this wasn’t his only foray into non-musical territory in any way), it’s important to note that he doesn’t hold much authorship over this work, and thus some of the fundamental aspects that defined his career – visual flair, incredible depth and a poignant sophistication – are almost entirely absent from the film, which causes Home from the Hill to feel too much like an exercise in redundancy, since promoting it as a directorial achievement seems inappropriate, considering how there really isn’t too much of Minnelli in here at all, other than his guiding hand shepherding it forward and bring the screenplay by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch to the screen in a way that feels convincing. A divisive opinion, but one that does carry some weight when considering how this film is an enormous departure for the director, perhaps not in terms of the subject matter, but the sense of enchantment that permeated even his most serious works. The expectation that Home from the Hill should be an effervescent work of fiction is simply wrong, but so is the inability of the film to do the most with the wealth of material it had to work with.

There are certainly some positive aspects of the film, particularly when it comes to the specific details that tend to manifest when the broader story disappoints. The performances in Home from the Hill may not be particularly noteworthy outside of the film, but in the context of the story, they’re oddly effective. Despite the presence of a major star like Robert Mitchum, or younger actors steadily rising in the industry such as Eleanor Parker and George Peppard, the film is lead by a young and relatively inexperienced George Hamilton, who may appear to be a prototype for Warren Beatty (who would play a nearly identical role in Splendor in the Grass the following year), but who is quite convincing as the young man realizing the sinister secrets lurking beneath his idyllic family. Hamilton may seem to be struggling on screen at some points – there is some very serious dramatic material he is tasked with conveying – and while certain moments may come across as disingenuous through the actor’s more unconventional means of expressing emotion, there is a certain charm in how Hamilton’s jagged youth contributes to the film as a whole, particularly in interactions with other characters. Despite being promoted as a starring vehicle for him, Mitchum isn’t in the film very much – he’s woven into the story at pivotal moments, playing the part of a rich Texan baron who tries to turn his teenaged son into a man. Home from the Hill is really only effective when it strikes the right tone between its characters, and to its merit, it does this quite frequently. Peppard is very good, and plays off his easygoing charm with an effortless authenticity that may be the best from the cast. Parker has some terrific moments too, even when she is struggling with the Southern accent, which often comes out as a jumble of words. It’s a solid cast that may not be definitive of any actor’s career, but its decent enough to be worthwhile for fans of any of these actors.

There are some gems hidden in Home from the Hill in terms of the performances, so the blatant refusal to recognize this, and instead go on the path of more overwrought storytelling, is a disappointment and detracts from the merits that are embedded in this film. Taken for what it is, this isn’t a bad film, but rather a massively disappointing one, with the general difference being that there was so much promise here, with very little of it manifesting all that well, instead taking the form of a far less successful work that has some moments of revelatory brilliance, but which are otherwise squandered by a lacklustre approach to a good premise. The film is unnecessarily long (clocking in at an exorbitant 150 minutes), with numerous sequences being inconsequential to the film, and their deletion from the final product would’ve absolutely improved the film somewhat, at least allowing it to move at a more steady tempo, rather than the lumbering pace that keeps us from fully committing to this story, which would’ve benefitted from a greater sense of self-awareness. Minnelli finds time to infuse some effective moments into the film – most particularly through the performances given by the actors – but it’s ultimately just not enough to justify this film’s existence, since Home from the Hill seems like a truly minor work in the career of a filmmaker whose consistent ability to push the boundaries of whatever genre he was working in was almost entirely absent here, and which should’ve been far more notable, given how this isn’t a difficult story to convincingly put together.