Rachel, Rachel

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.

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!

In a variation on her "Long Hot Summer" role, Woodward plays a sexually repressed schoolteacher in a small New England town who realizes that life is passing her by… She is thirty-five, a virgin, and dominated by her mother… During the summer, she has an affair with an old schoolmate… It proves disappointing, but she now knows that she can be loving, and determines to leave town and do something about her life—a move that seems only tentatively hopeful…

Woodward gives her finest performance as the confused, frequently beaten but ultimately indestructible woman… She has an extraordinary ability to look natural or simple and still reveal an inner radiance…

There are many touching moments: her timidness at the religious meeting; her awkward experiences with men; her late-night discussion with a likable male friend; and, most unforgettable, her face causing change from joyous expectancy to merely suppressed hysteria to a painful outburst of tears when she discovers that, contrary to her hopes, she is not pregnant...

Newman shows a natural cinematic sense in his perceptive depictions of small town life, the frenzied activity of a revival meeting and the anxieties of a first sexual experience; and in his clever, rarely impressive juxtaposition of Rachel's present with her fantasies and childhood memories… He gets excellent performances from Estelle Parsons as another lonely teacher and James Olson as the cynical big-city man who lets Rachel down…

Both Newman and Woodward won Golden Globe Awards… Woodward won the coveted New York Film Critics' Award, and was nominated for an Oscar

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.

In the turbulent cultural and political year of 1968, movies hadn't quite yet figured out how they wanted to address current events, or indeed whether they wanted to address them at all. The year's Oscar winner for Best Picture was "Oliver!," an entertaining but utterly irrelevant big-budget musical; "Funny Girl," another stage-to-screen musical that hasn't aged at all well, was also among the nominees. "The Lion in Winter" found Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn bickering in period costumes, while "Romeo and Juliet" gave Shakespeare a jolt of sexiness for the younger generation. Movies that actually felt like they had their finger on the uneasy pulse of the changing times, like "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Rosemary's Baby," "Faces," and "The Battle of Algiers," were nominated in lesser categories but none were up for the big prize. That fifth slot went to "Rachel, Rachel," in which Paul Newman directed his wife, Joanne Woodward, to a Best Actress nomination.

"Rachel, Rachel" certainly did not deserve a place at the Oscar podium above those titles just mentioned that weren't even nominated, but it does have much to recommend it, and the themes it's about speak more to a modern-day audience than those of many of its contemporaries, because they're both universal and timeless. Woodward plays a woman in her 30s, living with her annoying and needy mother and watching her life slowly drip away from her day by day. It's about that moment -- and I have to believe anyone over a certain age has experienced it at least to some degree -- where one realizes that he/she isn't so much living a life as dying a slow and inevitable death. What one does with the time in between suddenly becomes urgent in a way it hasn't ever felt before, and one understands how easy it would be to do nothing and let that slow death gradually come. Woodward's character, brought up in a mortuary and morbidly obsessed with death, doesn't exactly figure out what to do with the time left to her, but she does figure out that she needs to try something different, which is perhaps the best any of us can hope for. Woodward gives a beautiful and nuanced performance as a shy turtle coming out of her shell one painful inch at a time. The movie is melancholy and sad, but it's also hopeful in its conclusion that it's never too late to at least make a grab for, if not happiness, then at least contentment.

In addition to its nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress, the film also received nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons, as Rachel's closet lesbian friend), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Stewart Stern). Newman himself was not nominated for Best Director, which doesn't really surprise me. The Academy has always shown a penchant for acknowledging the showy over the subtle when it comes to that particular category.

Grade: A