It Never Rains, But It Pours in Ranchipur

I’ve always been a sucker for the disaster picture, and not just the ones we all remember from the so called disaster cycle of the 1970’s. A great many more cropped up in early times, and I’ve discussed many of those here in past blog articles such as IN OLD CHICAGO, THE RAIN’S CAME and others.

THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR (1955) was in effect a near shot for shot remake of Fox’s earlier, and better Tyrone Power show THE RAINS CAME (1939). My earlier article on that film may be found here.

A glossy, big budgeted CinemaScope love story featuring Lana Turner and a badly miscast turbaned Richard Burton, set (and partly shot, by the looks of it) in India, the picture is punctuated by an earthquake and a colossal flood, much of which looks pretty good still today. The picture was a 1955 Oscar nominee for it’s photographic effects, which were supervised by 20th Century Fox veteran effects man and matte artist Ray Kellogg. Interestingly, the earlier film THE RAINS CAME did win the Academy Award for special effects – and deservedly so. This remake has several good painted mattes, excellent miniatures and impressively well scaled deluge shots must have looked sensational back in the day on the huge Scope screen. The many optical combination shots suffer as one would expect from the anamorphic lens format and travelling matte shortcomings of the period. Until recently I’d only ever seen Ranchipur on tv in awful cropped down pan & scan format, though come to think of it, I actually don’t even think it was scanned at all – just dead centre with much periphery action just not seen and Lana’s nose at screen left and Burton’s nose at screen right in dialogue scenes. Jesus!…

…Read the Full Article @ Matte Shot

This blog is intended as a tribute to the ingenuity of the traditional matte painter where movie magic was created entirely by hand. Some of the shots will amaze in their grandeur and epic quality while others will surprise in their ‘invisibility’ to even the sophisticated viewer. I hope this collection will serve as an appreciation of the artform and both casual visitors and those with a specialist interest may benefit, enjoy and be amazed at skills largely unknown today

NZPete

I have gone further back into the archives of Matte Shot – A Tribute to Golden Era Special FX to feature even more articles from this great site, so  I hope you enjoy this wonderful journey we’re on together.

PJ Max