Rachel, Rachel

Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Joanne Woodward for Best Actress, Rachel, Rachel has faded from the public consciousness but its quiet virtues deserve more recognition. The story of a shy schoolteacher whose sexual awakening in her mid-30s leads to a deeper re-evaluation of her life, the film is sensitive and sympathetic, as well as a surprising directorial debut from Paul Newman. It’s a fine role for Joanne Woodward (Mrs Newman), and she balances the character’s mixture of inhibition and desire with delicacy and skill.

Joanne Woodward is an actress who inhabits her part as a soul does a body… It is in the transcendent strength of Joanne Woodward that the film achieves a classic stature. There is no gesture too minor for her to master. She peers out at the world with the washed-out eyes of a hunted animal. Her walk is a ladylike retreat, a sign of a losing battle with time and diets and fashion. Her drab voice quavers with a brittle strength that can command a student but break before a parent’s will. By any reckoning, it is [her] best performance.

Time

Offbeat and painfully real, Rachel, Rachel fits firmly in with films of the era like Five Easy Pieces and I Never Sang For My Father…not bad company to be in.

Tim Williams, Collider