A Rage to Live

A Rage to Live (1965)

A fabulous movie, well written, beautifully filmed and acted, intense and fast and beautiful, a real dramatic drama. And Suzanne Pleshette as the star is an astonishment, subtle and sharp and exactly what her part demands as the rich and sexually charged girl in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. Her two main men, played by Ben Gazzara and Bradford Dillman, are right on as well, and throw in Peter Graves as a third man in her life, and you get the range of characters and a sense of the plot. Yes, she's pulled by a handsome guy whether it's her husband or not.

And yet she never comes off to me as the "tramp" that some call her. She's warm and generous and seems to just be living her life as a nice person, even regretting her slipping off the straight and narrow now and then. The town's reaction is startling and believable. A really fabulous situation, a soap opera of sorts, but given a wonderful sense of form and pace and eventually high drama.

Director Walter Grauman is not a household name of course, and he directed mainly television, but he makes this a very slick and powerful production. The second half, especially, where Gazzara and Pleshette have a lot of screen time together, develops emotionally. Yes, the turns and conflicts are not total surprises, but they're well placed. Gazzara might be familiar to some for his role in "Anatomy of a Murder" across from Jimmy Stewart. Pleshette had a career with few great movies, but she did appear (second to Tippy Hedron) in "The Birds."

A vastly underrated movie, coming just a year or so before the big shift in styles and "New Hollywood." It's widescreen black and white, quite a treat to watch on every level. I guarantee it'll rise in value over the next decade.

Grace Caldwell (Suzanne Pleshette) has a problem - she really likes sex. The film treats it like an addiction, probably triggered when she is raped by a friend of her brother's when she is still in high school. It seems like, if she was a guy, at least when she was single, the adults wouldn't be taking this so seriously. But abortion was largely illegal in 1965, so that's at least part of it.

So like most addicts, Grace pledges reform at certain junctures - when her mother has a heart attack after they have an argument over her behavior, and then later when she marries Sidney Tate (Bradford Dillman). She first grows to love Sidney when he defends her honor against the insults of the man who raped her in high school. But in each case, in spite of promises of sobriety, she falls off the wagon and offends again. Being married and doing this can have particularly bad consequences, and it does.

Suzanne is joined by the earthy Ben Gazzara, the patrician Bradford Dillman, the slimy Mark Goddard (offering to scrub Suzanne's back), and even Peter Graves and the oleaginous character actor James Gregory slithers around as a family doctor (!). Bret Somers (then Mrs. Jack Klugman I believe) even proves that she was a thespian at least once before The Match Game became her claim to fame. One of my favorite character actors from the '60s, Frank Maxwell also pops up in a small role, (see 1958's Lonelyhearts for a sample of his real worth as an actor).

Despite the puritanical overtones, this is really a psychodrama about the forces of lust and jealousy versus the 50's white bread fantasy of domestic bliss. A-list actors and some great camera shots make me wonder why this film isn't more highly regarded.

I really love this movie. Grace Caldwell is the ultimate bad girl, tries to turn her life around, but is crushed in the end. Nothing like the book, A Rage To Live was considered racy for the 60's. Suzanne Pleshette acted her heart out. I've been waiting for years for this to come out on video; in fact, I haven't even seen it on TV for several years.

I would definitely recommend this film to others. I especially enjoyed this film because it had a great cast and the story plays out quite realistically. A lot of modern movies have very unrealistic endings or story lines and in contrast this movie contains a solid story line and a realistic ending. It shows how an individual's actions has consequences. So from this perspective, it also has a lesson woven into it. I really like the dramatic role each character has. Characters like Mrs. Hollister and Mr. Bannon really make the story entertaining. Aside from the richness of the story line, I absolutely loved the costumes! Suzanne Plechette wears a number of gorgeous dresses throughout the film that would still be fashionable today.

Grace Caldwell differs from the usual "bad girl" in that she's not trading sex for money, social advancement, etc. Nor is she detached from a "normal" life of home and family. Rather she is an intelligent wife & mother who has a fling on the side just because she's horny, in the manner expected of men. A good film with strong performances by Suzanne Pleshette as Grace & Ben Gazarra as her lover.