The Sea of Grass (MGM) lasts only a couple of hours, but it is possible to age a lot during that time. The story is a duel between conservative Cattleman Spencer Tracy and progressive Attorney Melvyn Douglas. Which shall make use of the prairie--the cattle, which will leave it as God made it, or homesteading farmers who (Mr. Tracy keeps warning) will skin it alive? Since Lawyer Douglas has Progress and the Federal Government on his side, the homesteaders eventually win.

Another protracted duel is fought over Mr. Tracy's unhappy wife (Katharine Hepburn). At a meeting in Denver--so discreetly handled, for the censors' sake, that it all seems to have been managed by pollination--Mr. Douglas gets Miss Hepburn with child. After the child grows up to be Robert Walker and has paid the inevitable price for his mother's sin (i.e., he gets killed off), the picture is quickly put out of its misery.

There is some honest historical conflict, and a bit of honest unhappiness, in this movie. Spencer Tracy too often gazes stonily at God's sea of grass to show that he is both rugged individualist and nature mystic, but he plays with considerable force and style. As the decades roll by, Melvyn Douglas looks as wretched as the most vindictive moralist could decently expect. Miss Hepburn looks tense too, but arouses interest chiefly through her beautiful turn-of-the-century costumes.

Late in the film, young Phyllis Thaxter appears as Tracy's daughter. The effect is like opening a window, late in spring, on a parlor that has been closed all winter. But Miss Thaxter's freshness comes too late. In spite of all the sincerity and talent involved in it, The Sea of Grass is an epically dreary film.

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