Rachel, Rachel

Plot synopsis:
Rachel Cameron (Joanne Woodward) is a shy, 35-year-old spinster schoolteacher living with her widowed mother in an apartment above the funeral home once owned by her father in a small town in Connecticut. School is out for summer vacation and Rachel figures it will just be another lonely and boring summer for her. (It's implied that she may even hate summer as her job provided somewhat of an escape from her domineering mother who's always trying to compare her to her sister who married a successful man). Fellow unmarried teacher and best friend Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons) persuades her to attend a revival meeting, where a visiting preacher encourages Rachel to express her need for the love of Jesus Christ. Rachel is overwhelmed by God's grace, baring so much pent-up emotion, that she is humbled after the service; comforting her, Calla suddenly begins to kiss Rachel passionately. Is Calla a lesbian, bisexual, or did she merely react to the emotion of the moment? The film does not answer this question, but Rachel's reaction is to withdraw from the friendship for the time being.
Into the void steps Rachel's high-school classmate Nick Kazlik (James Olson), a fellow teacher who teaches at an inner city school in The Bronx who's in town to visit his parents for a couple weeks. Upon first seeing her in town, Nick had made a crude pass that Rachel rebuffed, but after the episode with Calla, she succumbs to his charms and has her first sexual experience. Mistaking lust for love, she begins to plan a future with Nick, who rejects her once he realizes she views their relationship as more than a casual and temporary affair. He rejects her softly by using a fake photo of a woman and a young child claiming that they are his wife and son back in New York. She later discovers through his mother that he isn't really married.
Believing that she is pregnant, Rachel plans to leave town and raise the child. With Calla's assistance, she finds another teaching job in Oregon, but before the summer ends, she learns that her symptoms actually are due to a benign cyst. She is bitterly disappointed. After undergoing surgery to have the cyst removed, she tells her mother, in the hospital, that she has decided to relocate, and that her mother may accompany her or not, as she wishes. Her mother quickly agrees to go, in a way that suggests she realizes her dependence on Rachel and perhaps even will take her less for granted from now on. Rachel sets out with hope for the future, having learned that she has choices, that she is able to give and receive sexual pleasure, that it is possible for her to take on life actively, rather than wait for it to find her.
The film is punctuated by brief flashbacks to Rachel's lonely childhood with a forbidding undertaker father and rather neglectful mother. Brief daydreaming sequences of the adult Rachel also appear, including those showing her imagining seizing a stolen moment with the school's possibly sexual-harassing principal; taking an underloved boy in her classroom home with her; and rocking the expected baby in a park while children play nearby.

Tags: tragedy, psychedelic, flashback

Review:
Newman's Own. Both the camera and the man behind it were obviously in love with the actress on screen, and, that actress, Joanne Woodward, was arguably never better than she was in "Rachel, Rachel," husband-Paul-Newman's first directing effort.
Trapped in a small apartment above a funeral parlor with her whining possessive mother, Rachel is a schoolteacher with daydreams of having a life and children of her own.Rachel's emotions are written on Woodward's face in a way few actresses have ever conveyed feeling.
Although Kate Harrington, James Olson, and Estelle Parsons provide able support, the film is Woodward's showcase, and Newman's sturdy direction does not detract from his star.
The shifts between Rachel's present and her memories and dreams are seamless, clear, and illuminating rather than distracting.The film requires patience, but that does not imply boring, but rather leisurely paced, much like life in a small town that lies off the main roads.
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.
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.
She definitely should have gotten some Academy recognition.Rachel Rachel is a fine character study and a great vehicle for Joanne Woodward.
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.
Rachel's friend is Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), an equally lonely, repressed fellow teacher who has some issues in her life as well.
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.
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.
At each of those times the movie reflected stages of transition in my own life, and that is what makes it so riveting, scarily so, even today almost 40 years after I first saw it.This movie, like Midnight Cowboy and others, effectively demonstrates how small-town repression and childhood experiences invariably seep into our adult lives and influence them in ways not always recognizable or to our benefit.
Here is a repressed girl in a repressive small town (often New England is a symbol of suffocating, inbred, isolated, deep-level collective cultural phantoms.) doing her best to essentially stay that way, despite the well-intentioned but misdirected efforts of Calla (did Estelle Parsons play the cantankerous sister in "I Never Sang for my Father"?).
The flashbacks to childhood, especially the dying boy and her own experience in the basket in the mortuary prep room, are chillingly effective in conveying the grip her youth's experiences still have on her.As for the picture the man shows Woodward, I thought it was his dead twin brother, or it could have been his son.
And that may bring Rachel dangerously close to the hold that her childhood could still have on her.Finally, Rachel's decision to go to Oregon (a symbol of liberation from past miasmas, a "coming into one's own light a la the free-standing Kouros, a Jungian "individuation") makes this film very satisfying to watch.
In pretty much every movie where I've seen Joanne Woodward, she does a great role, and "Rachel, Rachel" (directed by her husband Paul Newman) is no exception.
Woodward plays Rachel Cameron, a schoolteacher in a conservative, repressive small town.
But things just might change when childhood friend Nick (James Olson) returns to town after spending many years in the big city.By barely moving her face, Woodward conveys many emotions in this movie: anguish, cynicism, hope, and more.
Paul Newman directed his wife Joanne Woodward in this adaptation of Margaret Laurence's book "A Jest of God", and does a pretty good job envisioning the plight of a small town spinster schoolteacher who is aching to break free from a life with no prospects.
Newman's inherent good taste (the pastoral town, the neighborly feel) works against the need to show this woman's personal suffocation, and though we can see that romance might bring her happiness, the film is unsatisfactory in tying up this loose end in Rachel's life.
However, Woodward pulls out all the stops in conveying a repressed woman, on the road to a grim spinsterhood, in the tradition of Olivia DeHavilland's "The Heiress."Paul Newman is great in his directing debut.Estelle Parsons, having won the supporting actress award the year before for "Bonnie and Clyde," was nominated again in this category as another frustrated teacher.
This film clearly shows the strong and loving relationship between Joanne Woodward and the film's director and her husband, Paul Newman.
With this being Paul Newman's directorial debut, and starring Joanne Woodward, you would think it would be better known than it is.
Joanne Woodward effectively plays a bored and boring middle-aged school teacher who still lives with her mother at a funeral home in Connecticut.
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.
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.
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-.
He directed, she starred in this character study of a 35 year old second grade school teacher (Woodward) who realizes at the beginning of the summer season that she's middle aged and, in her words, it's all downhill into the grave from here.We've seen this kind of character study before, most notably in David Lean's splendid "Summertime" with Katherine Hepburn.
The problem is that she's such a pleasant and pretty woman that it's difficult to understand why she's so lonely or has allowed herself to withdraw so completely.As for the rest of the small cast, Estelle Parsons plays her only friend and fellow school teacher who might be hiding more than she's letting on.
...covered me like a gloved hand"...; Sylvia Plath wrote this in the "Bell Jar" and it aptly portrays Paul Newman's brilliant direction of Joanne Woodward, living out her life in the idyllic American suburbs.What is addressed is quiet desperation, the rage and powerlessness Rachel feels over her own life.
A good deal of credit must, undoubtedly, go to Paul Newman, director, who as a marvelous actor, knows how to give marvelous performances and how to use the camera to highlight those performances.The problem is that, given those marvelous performances, the story consists of a couple of days in which Miss Woodward's character recognizes that her life stinks.
Perhaps you'll feel different about .it...I just didn't care very much for the movie.This movie is unusual because Joanne Woodward's husband, Paul Newman, directed the film--and it was his first directorial job.
Rachel, Rachel (1968)*** 1/2 (out of 4) Mature, adult drama has Joanne Woodward playing Rachel, a 35-year-old school teacher living with her mother in a small town.
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.
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).
The film is based on Margaret Laurence's novel A JEST OF GOD, it is all about Rachel (Woodward), an unassuming spinster in her 30s, living with her dependent widowed mother May (Harrington) in a rural town in Connecticut.
Remarkably, the film takes a rather unbiased prospect towards all its characters, not just Rachel, even May, Nick and Calla, each has their defects but Newman injects humane realism into their behaviour and mind patterns, never let the drama stand in the way of characterisation, we might not agree with them, but we cannot blame them either.
This is one of those so called ground breaking 60's dramas which uses the familiar device of a hopeless, frustrated spinster, (such as Jane Wyman would have played 10 or 15 years earlier, think "Miracle in the Rain") in an attempt to propagandize the audience into thinking the solution to her dilemma is sexual liberation.Thus we have plain jane school-teacher Woodward finding carnal knowledge with a former classmate who's on a brief return visit to her home town.Woodward sees sky rockets, marriage and children, and of course suffers the inevitable disillusionment of desertion.Exceedingly well acted by all concerned, with many precise observations of small town life, (including a brilliant evocation of an old ladies bridge club) , the film uses these strengths to cloak, (make respectable?) distasteful scenes of Woodward's ruination in the hay, along with a highly improbable Lesbianic interlude with Estelle Parsons.How interesting it would have been to have seen this theme treated the way Francois Mauriac would have realized it--and yet nowhere is the moral, much less, supernatural dimension even fleetingly evoked much less alluded to.Indeed the films' only reference to religion is a depiction of a revival meeting featuring a wild eyed snake handler.And so, in the end, (like so many other late sixties pretensions), all that we are left with here is mere, dreary, sociological naturalism, a melo but with the same basic ends as a Norman Lear comedy (all you squares need to unshackle all of your old wives tale repressions)--and not the lyrical star dust of Tennesse Williams who explored the same themes in "Summer and Smoke".Not the sort of role Loretta Young would have played!.
My own favorite story of a lonely woman is SUMMERTIME with Katharine Hepburn which had a lot more flavor as well as a genuinely entertaining and moving story.However, RACHEL, RACHEL drags along at an interminably slow pace with many close-ups of star Joanne Woodward as she reflects on the emptiness of her dull, spinisterish life in a small town.
Most of the scenes are played too long to hold viewer interest.As a result, I found it tedious and somewhat boring at times because nothing of real interest seemed to happen, except in a few flashbacks showing the effect her disturbing childhood had on her upbringing.The acting is competent but I never found the story involving enough to care about the fate of the main character or the few supporting characters for that matter.
This is Paul Newman's directorial debut starring his wife Joanne Woodward.
This character study of New England spinster schoolteacher "Rachel Cameron" played by Joanne Woodward was husband Paul Newman's directorial debut.
Presently, "Rachel" lives with catty, demanding mother Kate Harrington and is fairly close to co-teacher Estelle Parsons (as Calla Mackie), who attends Christian revival meetings.
Newman and Woodward won a "triple crown" of top awards for the drama, being cited by "The New York Film Critics", "Film Daily", and the "Golden Globes" as the "Best Director" and "Best Actress" of the year.******* Rachel, Rachel (8/26/68) Paul Newman ~ Joanne Woodward, James Olson, Kate Harrington, Estelle Parsons.
Newman directed his wife Joanne Woodward in the title role, and he repeatedly praised her acting, saying at times it was difficult to watch because it was so real.
exploration of feelings nuances , force of an actress, a gray story, a splendid acting.salted flavor of a life who begins later and one of the greatest role of Joanne Woodward, the precise work of Paul Newman and something else, who seduce and fascinate the viewer.a story of balance between past and present, dream and reality, fear and need to be yourself.its secret - the precision of performance for discover, step by step, the character, the possibility to discover slices from yours existences and the measure of each scene.
While Obsessing with Death and Contemplating a Worthless Life, She Discovers Sex and a Possible, Positive Change in Her Completely Unsatisfying Life.Joanne Woodward Gives a Powerful Performance and the Movie is Directed with Restraint by Paul Newman.
The film allows us into her inner thought processes, and we realize that she has suicidal fantasies that she herself characterizes as "morbid." She feels that she is at the exact middle of her life, and that this is her last "ascending summer." During the course of the film, we see that a revival meeting at a church cannot get Rachel "reborn," and are happy when the lonely woman enters into her first sexual relationship, with an old acquaintance visiting from out of town.
Newman's direction is sensitive and assured, especially for a beginner, and the supporting players (most particularly James Olson as Nick, the new man in Rachel's life, and Oscar-nominated Estelle Parsons as Rachel's lesbian gal pal, Calla) are all very fine.
When one has not really lived, life is actually a sort of slow death.That is a pretty morbid thought, but it is the painful conclusion that Rachel (Joanne Woodward) comes to in the beginning of this film; her life isn't really a life, but a slow, lonely march to the grave.
In the end, for the first time in her life, she makes a decision for herself, and sets about to potentially change the course of her life -- to make that journey toward the grave a little more meaningful.Joanne Woodward is perfect in this film; there are no missteps in her work, and she is able to convey so much without ever overdoing it.
A film that draws its greatest power from its most subtle, fragile moments, "Rachel, Rachel" is a sweet coming-of-age drama where the subject is a woman neither in her teens or early twenties, but of an age where she has begun giving up on anything special ever happening to her.Joanne Woodward embodies the title role with disarming ease, a frumpy small-town teacher who lives with her mother above a funeral parlor.
"How polite and well brought-up you are," he tells Rachel in one of many uncomfortable moments Olson delivers well.Terry Kiser, best known today as the title walking-dead guy from the "Weekend At Bernie's" series, shines as a charismatic preacher, while Donald Moffat plays Rachel's father in a series of enigmatic, effective flashbacks with Woodward and Newman's real-life daughter Nell Potts as Rachel.
It's a real family affair; Newman himself can be heard if not seen as a character in a scary movie Rachel and Nick go see.On the whole, this is a solid and worthwhile film, very much a product of its times yet ahead of them, too.
Director Newman reveals a wonderful sensitivity matched by his eye for pictorial images, the small New England town is captured to perfection yet is light years away from Peyton Place and the theme of time passing is conveyed subtly in scenes of pastoral/agricultural life following the seasons.
But when you've got Paul Newman as director, and his real-life wife Joanne Woodward playing a small town New England school teacher who is facing her problems of loneliness, that's made for the big screen, and "Rachel, Rachel" was one of 1968's most anticipated dramas.