Rachel and the Stranger (1948)

So much to write about that it might require two posts.  Let’s start with the delayed movie review.  I watched this last night but due to massive studying I just couldn’t write it out.  Today’s film is an odd little movie from 1948 called Rachel and the Stranger.  To preface, and many a classic film fan will understand, what do you expect from a film that stars both William Holden AND Robert Mitchum?  You should get pure awesomness.  I mean Holden and Mitchum are two of the sexiest classic film stars out there (that’s just my opinion).  The problem is neither actor had hit their peak so the movie is a minor stepping stone in their careers and it feels it.  The plot is just odd, and ends with a resolution that just feels like it’s been tampered with due to Code constraints.  For a movie starring Holden and Mitchum, I expected a lot more.

When farmer David Harvey‘s (William Holden) wife dies he realizes he needs to find a new woman to raise his young son and keep up the house.  He buys a bondwoman named Rachel (Loretta Young) to be that woman.  Rachel meets resistance from David’s young son Davey (Gary Gray) and David himself doesn’t like Rachel.  When David’s best friend Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) arrives and starts hitting on Rachel, David starts to question his relationship with the woman.

Let’s get the prelims out-of-the-way.  I’d originally heard about this movie during the Bill Holden Birthday Celebration on TCM.  I’d also read about it in Hollywood Madonna: Loretta Young (a book which I’m STILL giving away so please enter already) and since it stars two of my leading men I had to watch it.  The film came out two years before Holden made Sunset Blvd and was Mitchum’s follow-up to Out of the Past.  Suffice it to say that both men look fantastic!  I mean Mitchum looks young and gorgeous and it was weird seeing Bill Holden with longer hair and generally not being the charming womanizer.

That was one of the bigger problems I had with Rachel and the Stranger.  Holden doesn’t seem to have cultivated that charm and charisma that we’d see in The Moon is Blue and Sabrina.  Here he’s trying to play David as repressed, conveying the emotion he feels internally.  Sadly, Holden fails at this and just comes off as cold and bland.  He’s not particularly dynamic and it allows for Mitchum to easily overshadow him which pains me to say.  It’s established early on that Jim and David are rivals for women as David’s wife was originally courted by Jim before she married so within the first five minutes you know they’ll be fighting for Rachel herself.

A perfect segue into my next issue with the movie…the plot.  I mean the entire plot surrounds the buying and selling of a woman.  I understand it’s set in the Old West but they do everything they can to make Rachel pretty much the poster child for human trafficking.  She’s labeled a bondwoman, which according to Dictionary.com is a female slave.  David only buys her to keep his house up and raise Davey and tells her upfront she’s to bring his meals to him and that’s all their relationship is.  Even during the “auction” scene David asks questions about Rachel to the people selling her, never to Rachel herself.  If this is the Old West why are there no African American slaves?  The only slaves are apparently white women?  And Davey!  Oh this kid was a brat.  I understand he lost his mom but he tells Rachel outright she’s only a slave and she’s worthless….Wow.  Rachel is learning to shoot but I’d be doing target practice on Davey if I was her.

The entrance of Jim Fairways is where the movie’s plot ramps up as we now develop a love triangle between Jim, David, and Rachel.  Or at least that’s the movie’s intention.  I saw no love triangle to be had because it’s obvious Jim deserves Rachel.  I love both Holden and Mitchum equally but damn is Mitchum smooth in this film!  He sings, he treats Rachel like a human, you know the little things.  Of course David starts to feel left out when Rachel, Davey, and Jim start singing and having fun.  We’re supposed to believe that David is connected to his former wife, seen with his constant playing with the metronome that the wife sent out for, but it just seemed like one big dick measuring contest (pardon my French).  Jim turns on the charm because he knows Rachel doesn’t love David and vice versa.  Watch the scene where he tries to tell Rachel how to shoot a gun, “it’s like caressing.”  Swoon.  Jim even says to David “you don’t treat her like a man treats a wife.”   Here’s a bit of Mitchum singing from the movie for your enjoyment:

Obviously David just doesn’t want Jim playing with his toys!  David becomes indignant at the mention of Jim buying Rachel from him, but yet David had no trouble buying Rachel in the first place.  Let’s say it all together HYPOCRITE!  The entire plot of the movie devolves into everyone seeing Rachel as property and that made my blood boil because even though the movie is set in the Old West, it was made in 1948, Hollywood couldn’t find a way to balance the two?  Rachel eventually gives an impassioned speech that details everything I wanted to say about how the men are idiots fighting over her like property.  Loretta Young displays genuine anger at her plight in life and it’s one of the few moments of genuine emotion I saw throughout the film.  Especially since Rachel has suffered in silence throughout the majority of the movie.  If only she had stuck to her guns!

Rachel tells David he’s an idiot and even then David isn’t man enough to admit his faults.  He simply calls Rachel “ungrateful” because he at least “marred her legal.”  Well isn’t that big of you David?  So not only are you an ass but you’re pretty much admitting that Rachel shouldn’t go with Jim because you legally own her.  Eventually Rachel tells them to stick it where the sun don’t shine (okay it’s Loretta Young so she doesn’t say that) and leaves with David, Davey, and Jim all trying to convince her to go with one of them.  By this point it’s laughable that if she has to go with any man that she would pick David, I mean he’s a total ass.  Jim may leave you high and dry eventually but you’d have fun with him.  Sorry, gotta get my mind out of the classic movie gutter.

The two rivals for Rachel’s heart each give a speech to lure Rachel to pick them.  At least that’s the intent.  Jim’s speech is a love speech where he tells her that he wasn’t the type to settle down until he met Rachel and all.  It’s romantic.  David, well David tells Rachel she should come back because “the boy” and “the dogs” will miss her.  Jim appeals to her as a freaking person!  Now, you can try to tell me that David is a bad character to express his feelings but seriously!  He never changes his technique, even at the climax of the film, Rachel just learns to deal with him!

By the end there’s an Indian attack because with female white slavery I guess Indian attack is the next logical jump.  Rachel is saved by David…and I guess all that repressed love comes out but I just felt that the movie was ending and they needed her to stay married.  David drops the metronome, apparently chucking the memory of his new wife and smashing it to the ground.  What a great way to end the movie.  “Honey, I’ve treated you like crap for 90 minutes, let me just trample this last remaining memory of the wife I’ve loved for said 90 minutes and we’ll get to me apologizing for that white slavery business.  Oh, the movie’s over….okay!”  The ending is just so treacly and fake that it ruined any connection I had.  David’s love comes from out of nowhere and of course Rachel falls for it after giving that speech!

I understand the constraints of the time period but who believed this felt genuine?  Rachel and the Stranger is just okay.  It’s far from perfect but it’s not a complete trainwreck.  I’m just sad considering it’s a movie starring both Holden and Mitchum, neither one at their best.  It’s a rare film to see both actors in, it’s just not as great as I figured considering.

Grade: C