Die Liebe eines Sommers

This film is one my all time favorites. It's a strong story about a school teacher who lives with her cranky, dominating mother and who hasn't had (or used!) the chance to take responsibility for her own life. Rachel is a woman of many fears; fears that may seem insignificant and vain from an outsiders point of view but that are everything to her, that actually define the framework for her life. In a little town of conservative values it is hard to take a turn and find the courage to become something you weren't before. Joanne Woodward gives a masterful performance and is the heart and soul of this film. She does the most incredible things with just her eyes and her face, and her voice. She makes Rachel so real it hurts to watch. That's acting. Estelle Parsons as Calla is fantastic, too. This is a beautiful, sensitive movie, highly underrated and way too unknown to most people. For me, it's a classic. Go find it and see it!

Joanne Woodward effectively plays a bored and boring middle-aged school teacher who still lives with her mother at a funeral home in Connecticut. She's on the verge of mental collapse, but hides it well and pretends everything's okay. A guy from her childhood comes to town from the big city (James Olson) and her appetite for change comes to the fore.

This potent drama was Paul Newman's first stab at directing and it's the best cinematic depiction of the inward struggle of flesh and spirit -- id and superego -- I've ever seen. This struggle explains why it's called "Rachel, Rachel." Rachel is experiencing the undercurrent conflict between spiritual and carnal impulses. She's stuck between goody-goody Rachel and libertine Rachel and is therefore in living limbo. Various outside factors encourage this lifeless state: Disturbing childhood memories of living in a funeral home, a mother who essentially views Rachel as her personal servant and a genuine friend who's love is starting to become unhealthy (Estelle Parsons).

The film features a mind-blowing pentecostal church sequence that lasts 10-12 minutes. I can't believe Newman had the cojones to include this scene and it's pulled off expertly with Terry Kiser as the guest preacher who "speaks in tongues," which is what Calla (Parsons) tells Rachel when it's reveal that he's the speaker. Parsons is fabulous here, by the way.

Due to the subject matter and the fact that this is a drama there are some boring stretches, so you have to be in the mood for a serious drama. Nevertheless, the film deserves credit for having the gonads to show real life and refusing to be politically correct -- an amazing drama.

In case you didn't know, Newman and Woodward were husband & wife for 50 years, up to his death in 2008.

The film runs 101 minutes and was shot in Connecticut.

GRADE: A-

Based on the novel "A Jest of God" by Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence, "Rachel, Rachel" is the story of Rachel Cameron (beautifully played by Joanne Woodward), a middle-aged schoolteacher who tries to come out of her shell before it's too late. Her father, recently deceased, was the town's funeral director. She still lives at home with her demanding mother (Kate Harrington). Rachel's friend is Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), an equally lonely, repressed fellow teacher who has some issues in her life as well. Rachel has a chance on love when a man (James Olson) returns to the small town in Connecticut from NYC. Rachel has some difficulty handling emotions she's never felt before. She's still haunted by her past and has difficulty coping with reality and fantasy. As Rachel mentioned at the beginning of the film, she's middle-aged, she's lived half of her life, what can she do now?

This was Paul Newman's debut as director. He did a fine job directing his wife Joanne Woodward. He captured the loneliness of this woman without overdoing it as well as the atmosphere of living in a small town that is alternately comfortable and suffocating.

I was also impressed with the supporting cast. Including Estelle Parsons, Kate Harrington and James Olson, Donald Moffat as Rachel's very scary father and two very charismatic performances by Geraldine Fitzgerald as the local reverend and Terry Kiser as a traveling faith healer.

Although it received four Oscar nominations, "Rachel, Rachel" seems to have fallen off the radar screen. Some of the movies that were released in 1968 included "The Lion in Winter", "Funny Girl", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Planet of the Apes".

"Rachel, Rachel", a mature, well-acted drama, certainly should be considered one of the more under-appreciated films of the late 1960s.

I saw "Rachel, Rachel" early one summer morning on cable. I woke up in the dark and turned the television on and the film began. I was hypnotized. The movie is so honest, and moving, and true that I thought I was still dreaming.

I grew up in Connecticut, and several of my aunts were schoolteachers, so I can tell you that every moment in the film is absolutely true. Paul Newman gets everything right... the repressed woman who is still under her mother's control, the judgmental small-town, the wild children, even the sound of the heat bugs on the country road! Joanne Woodward is absolutely mesmerizing as a woman lost in the shuffle, doing everything everyone wants her to and dying in the process...

This movie is not for everyone. There are no explosions or car crashes or digitally-animated comic book characters. But if you would like to see a genuine "slice-of-life" along the lines of "Midnight Cowboy" or even "The Graduate," then "Rachel, Rachel" is a film that will move you and make you think. Definitely worth seeking out.

Grade: A-

For Paul Newman's directorial debut, a property was chosen that was a real star vehicle for his spouse Joanne Woodward. In a distinctly unglamorous part, Rachel Rachel is about a 30 something spinster schoolteacher who lives with her perpetually sick mother and yearns to have something more out of life. She's inexperienced in a whole lot of different ways.

The script written by Stewart Stern which did receive an Oscar nomination uses the technique of Eugene O'Neill perfected on stage and screen in Strange Interlude. It's confined in this star vehicle to the lead character of Woodward. We get to hear her inner thoughts and see them acted out in her drab existence.

Looming in front of her consciousness is her unseen sister who did leave the nest and got married and started a family of her own. Mother Kate Harrington always uses that example to berate Woodward. At the same time Woodward must not entertain thoughts of leaving mother. The two live above a funeral parlor that was once her father Donald Moffat's business, but now has been taken over by Frank Corsaro who lets them stay on the premises. Not exactly an atmosphere to encourage romance of any kind.

After a night on the town with James Olson who quite frankly was just looking to make an easy score on a sex starved spinster, Woodward has to make a few life altering decisions.

Rachel Rachel got 3 other Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress for Joanne Woodward and Best Supporting Actress for Estelle Parsons. Parsons has an interesting role herself as fellow teacher and confidante to Woodward. She's got herself wrapped in some fundamentalist church which serves as her vehicle for a social life. But that is far from Woodward's scene.

Purportedly Woodward was miffed that husband Newman got no nomination for Best Director. But I think the one who really should have been miffed is Kate Harrington. A veteran of a couple TV soap operas this was clearly her big screen career role. And she's really the only one who matches Woodward in any scene they're in. She definitely should have gotten some Academy recognition.

Rachel Rachel is a fine character study and a great vehicle for Joanne Woodward. And having it filmed in and around Paul and Joanne's Connecticut home must have been a blessing for both of them.