Rachel, Rachel

An impressive directorial debut for Newman, Rachel, Rachel stars his wife, Joanne Woodward, and their daughter Nell Potts. An account of a spinster striving to break out of her frustrating job as a teacher and her demanding home life, looking after her mother, the film's virtues lie in the wry observation of Rachel's slipping into a second childhood when James Olson appears on the scene as a possible saviour. While in no way as powerful as Barbara Loden's Wanda, Newman's film none the less captures the quiet desperation of enforced life in sleepytown America.