Raintree County (film) - Plot

Plot

In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift), a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) by a young rich New Orleans girl, Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor). He has a brief and passionate affair with Susanna while she is visiting in Raintree County. After her return to the South, she suddenly reappears to report that she is pregnant. John quickly marries her out of honor and duty, leaving Nell heartbroken.

John and Susanna initially live in the South with Susanna's family. But John, an abolitionist, does not fit well into southern society. He learns that Susanna's mother went insane and died in a suspicious fire, along with Susanna's father and a female slave who was intimated to be his lover. Susanna suspects that the slave may even have been her biological mother. It becomes apparent that Susanna has inherited her family's curse of mental illness. She finally admits to John that she faked pregnancy to trick him into marriage.

John and Susanna return to Freehaven in Raintree County, Indiana, before the outbreak of the Civil War, where John works as a teacher. They eventually have a child, Jimmy, born at the outbreak of the war. In the war's third year, Susanna develops severe paranoia and delusions. She flees Indiana, taking their young son, Jimmy, with her and seeks refuge among her family in Georgia.

Johnny becomes determined to find her and his son, and enlists in the Union Army in hopes that he will cross paths with Susanna and Jimmy. He fights in a number of hellish battles, and eventually finds Jimmy at an old plantation where he learns that Susanna has been placed in an insane asylum. He is wounded while carrying Jimmy back to Northern lines from the upcoming Southern soldiers and then is discharged from the Union Army. Johnny searches for Susanna and finds her in dreadful circumstances in a lunatic asylum and returns with her to Raintree County.

News reaches Raintree County that the South has surrendered, and shortly thereafter Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. Johnny contemplates his future, and Nell urges him to run for political office. Susanna recognizes that John and Nell still love each other, and she decides to sacrifice herself to make way for Johnny to pursue his career and consummate his love with Nell. She runs into the nearby swamp in the middle of the night to find the legendary rain tree. Her four-year old son follows her. The search party eventually finds her body, and John and Nell find Jimmy lying asleep and head out of the swamps, not aware that the tall rain tree is glowing in the sunlight.