Rachel, Rachel

 

 

RACHEL, RACHEL          B+

USA  (101 mi)  1968  d: Paul Newman

 

One of the hard to find missing gems of the 60’s, a film that shows great insight into America’s greatest thespian marriage, where at the peak of his popularity, after making Hud (1963), HARPER (1966), HOMBRE (1967) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967), Paul Newman went behind the camera to direct his first film, a showpiece for his wife, easily the better half of the marriage on stage, Joanne Woodward, who simply nails this role as a lonely spinster in a small Southern town.  Adapted from a Canadian novel set in Manitoba outside Winnipeg, Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God, the film has the meticulous detail and feel of a short story set in the American South, where Rachel has done all the right things dedicating her life for others, teaching second graders, taking care of her elderly mother, and is seen as a model citizen, but for the life of her can’t find happiness.  Nothing changes in her rural environment, where the rhythm of life is pretty much the same as when she was a child, seen in flashbacks, played by the Newman’s own blond-haired daughter, Nell Potts, where by middle age it appears life is passing her by, looking after her invalid mother (Kate Harrington), realizing she’s not the person she imagines herself to be and feels inadequate in every way.  When a childhood friend wanders back into town, Nick (James Olson), the son of a farmer who never much cared for cows, he asks her out on a date which has reverberations, as we suspect it’s the first in perhaps decades.  All she’s had is best friend Calla, Estelle Parsons, a fellow teacher, an actress who just a year earlier won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and who perfectly matches Woodward in every frame.  Parsons is not over the top hysterical in this film, but bravely offers Woodward a kiss in a private moment, which speaks more to the acute loneliness of the individual than any sexual interest.  Be that as it may, it’s an astounding moment having profound impact into their friendship, which is perhaps the most carefully nuanced relationship in the film, as they are alike, like sisters. 

Much is made of the date sequence, where one’s first impression is to think of Nick as a cad, a callous hipster who simply plays it as it lays, never realizing until the moment at hand that she’s a virgin, and then, since the entire film is seen through her perspective, her inner narration, her flashbacks, he’s continually pulling back from anything more serious.  Her intensity is overwhelming, where her view of herself is undergoing a complete transformation, but he’s barely interested and tries to remove himself from the situation as much as possible.  After all, he barely knows her.  In hindsight, however, he doesn’t come across so poorly, as he’s just a guy that was passing through town and never had any intentions of staying or taking root.  She, on the other hand, can’t wait for the opportunity to seek more out of life and feels driven to demand more out of herself than to continue to accept the monotonous rhythm that has been her routine.  Woodward is brilliant as a woman in a state of flux, who is no surer of herself than she is of what matters in life.  All her life she’s lived in fear, fear of her father, mother, authority, God, where she’s continually sacrificed her own choices for the betterment of others.  Interestingly, her father was a mortician who ran a funeral home on the premises, but his work area was off limits, forbidden, keeping him emotionally off limits both as a child but continuing into adulthood, never allowing herself to express how she feels.  All bottled up inside, it’s like she’s led the life of a stranger who barely knows the world around her, even her own environment or her own body. 

A small slice of life film that today would be called an indie film, shot for $700,000 dollars, as the focus is on tiny details and the exquisite performances, one of Woodward’s best in her entire career, nominated for an Academy Award, but losing out to Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) and Katharine Hepburn (THE LION IN WINTER) in a tie for Best Actress.  Newman directs a quiet and introspective film, recognized as a 60’s film from his use of flashbacks, as they dominate the interior landscape, which was a quite trendy trademark of the times, especially prevalent in European films.  What’s unique is the shortness and lack of development of the flashback sequences, which always interrupt the present like a brief daydream, whimsical, colorful, following the actions of a curious and precocious young girl, leaving the audience wondering about that earlier childhood, which at times feels more interesting than her present life.  While we might like to learn more, the details are etched in the present, where to the sound of a ticking clock, we hear Rachel whispering to herself as her mother sits transfixed by the front window:  “She watches the street like a captain watches the sea, praying for a funeral to come by to cheer her up.”  Much of the dialogue is witty and quite literary, which gives the film a timeless feel.  Newman’s style is to continually enhance the interior state of mind, so that by the end, the ambiguity of the compliant past mixing with the stifling suffocation of the present becomes synonymous with the possibilities of her own future, where the final images, supposedly shot in Connecticut, but bearing a startling resemblance to Mendocino, California, offer a hauntingly poetic mirror reflection. 

Funny Girl

FUNNY GIRL                                                 B+                  

USA  (155 mi)  1968  ‘Scope  d:  William Wyler

I'm the greatest star there is by far, but no one knows it.                 

—Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand)

It has been commonly said that the musical 'Funny Girl' was a comfort to people because it carried the message that you do not need to be pretty to succeed. That is nonsense; the 'message' of Barbra Streisand in 'Funny Girl' is that talent is beauty.          

—Pauline Kael

One of the few films that opens with a six minute orchestral interlude and plays with an intermission, where the film up to that point is marvelous, falling flat afterwards in a story that resembles Judy Garland’s career ascent and James Mason’s descent in A STAR IS BORN (1954).  Like that film, an old veteran director, William Wyler (in his only musical), a guy who directed 35 Academy Award winning performances, was brought in to replace Sidney Lumet who had artistic differences, as George Cukor was Garland’s choice, as he was known at the time as an actress’s director.  Cukor was much more successful, but what each film has in common is the explosive performances of the stars, as in this film Barbra Streisand, who also appeared in the Broadway role in 1964, put her name up in lights and proved beyond a doubt that everyone else in the production was secondary, as she was a full blown star, while Garland rose to heights never before reached since THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), and pulls off perhaps the greatest performance ever in a musical production.  Streisand’s career took a similar descent afterwards, but not due to any lack of talent or a deterioration of her performances, but due to her “diva” temperament where her public persona took a nosedive, known for telling everyone exactly what she wanted them to do, where she insisted that things be so perfect all the time until no one wanted to work with her anymore, developing a reputation as a control freak, this despite winning two Academy Awards, one for Best Actress in this film, another for composing the Best Original Song, “Evergreen” from the 1976 remake of A STAR IS BORN, also eight Grammy awards, four Emmy awards, a special Tony award, an American Film Institute award and a Peabody Award, while also recording over thirty Top Ten best selling albums with nearly a fifty year span in between, and is the only artist to release number one albums in each of five consecutive decades.  But due to her partisan activism in the Democratic Party, Streisand made President Nixon’s infamous Enemies List in 1971, just 3 years after the release of this film.  

The story revolves around Fanny Brice (Streisand), a turn of the century vaudeville star whose talent could easily have made her one of the first Talkies’ female stars, but her looks didn’t conform to the Hollywood standards of beauty, which is a theme that opens this film, as Brice has been raised with realistically lowered expectations of her own self image and has profound issues over her lack of what she feels are society’s standards of beauty, claiming “I'm a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls!”  Even in her initial performance as a Ziegfeld Follies girl, her self-deprecating sarcasm, altering the script (without permission), appearing pregnant on a stage filled with Busby Berkeley style beauties, won the endearing affection of the audience, and five curtain calls.   Her never take no for an answer and nothing-can-stop-me determination is what won the hearts of theater companies, where she’s seen singing “I’m the Greatest Star” to an empty theater which immediately wins her a job performing an ensemble singing act on rolling skates, a hilarious skit that veers out of control since she doesn’t know how to skate, an outlandish performance that Bette Midler would immediately replicate on stage with mermaids and wheelchairs.  Her brash wit and non-conformist style are a revelation in a business that is used to tried and true routines.  But what really bowls them over is her voice, as she’s sensational, actually acting out the songs she’s singing, adding humorous asides as if she’s speaking to an invisible character in the song.  In my lifetime, only Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli, think Bob Fosse’s CABARET (1972) and Martin Scorsese’s NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), come close to providing the same personal magnetism and electrifying voice on stage. 

Fanny’s onstage performance earns her a backstage admirer, Omar Sharif (an Egyptian born actor who was vilified in both the Arabic and American press for sharing his role with a Jew, including a screen kiss, shot during the deflating impact of the 1967 Six Day War) as gambler and high roller Nick Arnstein, a gorgeously handsome guy in a perfectly pressed suit who lives each day as if it was his last, where his charming and impeccable style is impossible for Fanny to resist.  Nonetheless, as his business calls him to places around the world, nothing serious develops except an initial infatuation, where she sings “People” to Nick with tears of joy in the alley behind her mother’s house on Henry Street in the Jewish slums of New York’s Lower East Side.  Meanwhile, she becomes a blossoming star whose magnificent voice and unprecedented comic timing make whatever production she appears in a smash hit.  But when they meet again, set in a luminous brightly colored red dining room, which includes a bed, Fanny is swept off her feet to the duet “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” which leads to their marriage and firstborn in a montage that stretches no more than 30 seconds.  And when people question Nick’s character, she blows the lid off their objections by belting out “Don’t Rain On My Parade.”  But as her career ascends, Nick has money troubles and he’s too proud to live off her accumulated wealth, ending in a disastrous embezzlement charge where he’d rather plead guilty than create negative publicity that might derail her career.  Streisand is magnificent in this film, as is much of the restored art direction where the eye-popping colors jump off the screen.  Her modernized, bringing the curtain down rendition of “My Man” My man - Barbra Streisand - YouTube (2:38), the only song in the production to be shot on film live, is reminiscent of Garland’s off the charts power and stage showmanship, star qualities that we haven’t seen in nearly half a century since the release of this film.