Some Notes on Miracle in the Rain

(1) In Miracle in the Rain, director Rudolph Mate is doing straight what Douglas Sirk does curled, without the ironizing or aestheticizing (which I love in Sirk). The straight approach is devastatingly effective. Watching Jane Wyman's breakdown in this film (very well played, perhaps her best performance) is excruciating in a way that spills over the sides of the romantic film genre format: it is like being present at a real tragedy in your own life.

(2) A commenter at Glenn Kenny's Some Came Running blog, on the occasion of Van Johnson's recent death, notes that in Miracle in the Rain, Van Johnson "plays that affable, agreeable guy practically as a force of nature; his character somehow enhances and enlivens the lives of everyone he meets or even comes into contact with." I completely concur with that. Of all the Van Johnson films I have seen, this is the one that by far makes the most interesting use of his "Van Johnson" qualities.