Baby the Rain Must Fall is a synthetic little Southern drama, all fancied up with yokel color and art-film flourish. The folksiness carries over from Scenarist Horton Foote's Broadway and TV play, The Traveling Lady. The flourishes must be charged to Producer Alan Pakula and Director Robert Mulligan who were teamed more happily in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird and Love with the Proper Stranger.
Most of Rain's inaction takes place smack-dab in Columbus, Texas, where Georgette (Lee Remick) toils as a carhop at the Magnolia Drive-in. Her no-good husband Henry (Steve McQueen) is a parolee who heads a...