Rachel, Rachel

The fifth and last of the nominees for Best Picture of 1968 is Rachel, Rachel, which brings to mind the old Sesame Street song, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other." In contrast to the grandeur and historical nature of Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, Oliver!, and Romeo and Juliet, Rachel, Rachel is set in contemporary time and looks like it had a budget of about a buck and a quarter. It is also small in focus, on one desperately unhappy woman.

Paul Newman made his directorial debut with this film, for which he won the Golden Globe (but was not nominated for an Oscar). He only directed five other films. His wife Joanne Woodward starred as the title character, a 35-year-old spinster school teacher living with her mother above a funeral parlor in a small New England town.

The action takes place over the summer break. Woodward is just about to the breaking point, unable to make any changes in her life, suffering as she caters to her controlling mother--she can't go out when it's her mother's bridge night, because she serves sandwiches. Woodward grew up in the funeral parlor, as her father was the undertaker there, and we see flashbacks of her childhood, including when she sneaks into the mortuary where her father (Donald Moffat, who died only a short time ago) is working on a body.

Woodward's best friend is Estelle Parsons, who belongs to a revivalist church where a preacher (Terry Kiser, who is most famous for playing the dead man in Weekend at Bernie's) speaks in tongues. Woodward, her emotions bottled up, has something of a breakdown. Later, she will meet an old classmate (James Olson) who takes her out and absconds with her virginity. He's only looking for some action, and on their second date, when she says she wants a child, you can hear the brakes squealing.

Rachel, Rachel is very much a film of its time. It is somewhat experimental, in that it relies on voice overs by Woodward and some imaginative editing by Dede Allen, as the flashbacks and current time narratives are stitched together, or when Woodward imagines what she'd like to be doing instead of doing nothing. The script, based on a novel, obliquely mentions such hot-button topics as abortion and lesbianism, without stating them by name.

The film kind of drags, though, and though Woodward will change her life at the end it's not a feel-good movie, nor particularly entertaining. I'm not much for voice overs by the character we're looking at--those thoughts should be apparent by the performance, and Woodward is terrific. She and Parsons were both nominated for Oscars.

If we were back in 1968 and were to attend one of those Oscar marathons in which all five movies were shown back to back, I'd put Rachel, Rachel first, and certainly not last, as you would sleep straight through it. Better to end with A Lion in Winter, which is consistently rousing.