Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is Paul Newman's directorial debut starring his wife Joanne Woodward. Rachel is a spinster school teacher. She's shy, emotionally damaged, and stuck with her mother. Then an old acquaintance's visit sets off a chain of emotional breakdowns.It's a bit of experimental filmmaking from Paul Newman. I'm not a fan of his directing. It doesn't build drama and it's very disjointed. The story doesn't flow. Luckily, Joanne Woodward is such a compelling actress. She's able to hold the attention despite the lack of skills with the camera.There are a few powerful scenes where certain unexpected things happen. Those are great scenes and the movie works great at the end. I only wish that those scenes were linked together by a better movie. It's still a worthwhile watch.

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!

This character study of New England spinster schoolteacher "Rachel Cameron" played by Joanne Woodward was husband Paul Newman's directorial debut. Flashbacks reveal the protagonist's troubled childhood. 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. "Rachel, Rachel" has fantasies showing her desire for male companionship and feels motherly toward one of her charges (Shawn Campbell). She rejects advances from Ms. Parsons, apparently a closeted lesbian, and has her first sexual relationship with high school teacher James Olson (as Nick Kazlik) during summer vacation."Rachel, Rachel" is extraordinarily performed, but difficult to follow in spots. For example, after reading about the film, the flashbacks Ms. Woodward experiences are easier to understand; otherwise, they seemed more sinister than sad. It's still possible "Little Rachel" (played as a girl by Nell Potts, the Newmans' real daughter) suffered some kind of child abuse, considering her mother's behavior. And, the brown-bagged item on the bed must be some kind of sexually-connected device. 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

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