Rachel and the Stranger (1948)

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Actually the film is nothing as racy as my title would suggest. It is a story of a frontiersman recently widowed, and left with a 9 year old boy. No wife, no mother, no one to do the laundry or cook dinner (this was the frontier, remember). What to do? Well, you could go buy an indentured servant. But don't let your best friend and neighbor find out.There is a great deal of purity and scruples to be found in "Rachel And The Stranger", but not a lot you can get your teeth into. No nuance here, just a straightforward story propelled by the star power of its principals. Holden the farmer first marries the servant (Loretta Young, who must be the best-looking indentured servant ever to milk a cow) to keep up appearances. Then they sleep in separate rooms. Mitchum is the neighbor/vagabond who takes a keen interest in Holden, and especially his new servant.There are no emotional highs or lows or tense moments to be found, and the three stars must have had an easy payday with this one. By the same token, it is a very likable, crowd-pleasing family picture which might have gone over even better in color. Holden was just two years away from "Sunset Boulevard", Mitchum fresh from "Out Of The Past", one of Hollywood's best noirs, and Loretta Young had recently won an Oscar for "The Farmer's Daughter" - three stars in their prime.

RACHEL AND THE STRANGER has the kind of quiet charm that LORETTA YOUNG always possessed and benefits from the more rugged screen presence of its leading men--WILLIAM HOLDEN and ROBERT MITCHUM. Loretta is an indentured servant who becomes the wife of William Holden and must prove herself worthy of the affections of Holden and his young son.There really is very little in the story that is original and the outcome can be predicted from scene one. It's clear that Loretta, as Holden's second wife, will have a hard time replacing his winsome wife who was a woman of modest talents and dearly loved by husband and son (GARY GRAY). Not unexpectedly, they both warm to her and so does Holden's "stranger" friend, ROBERT MITCHUM, who does a nice job raising his voice in song accompanied by guitar. Mitchum gives his usual laid back performance, nicely understated. The story may be a little too slow moving for some tastes since it's more of a character study of a widower and his new wife than it is a western.There's no real excitement to the story until the Indian attack which comes late in the story, but the film depends on the central performances of Young, Holden and Mitchum to hold interest as the three of them have some amusing interactions throughout the story.Nicely photographed in outdoor settings photographed in crisp B&W, it's a film full of simple charm without anything pretentious about it.Only drawback: Overuse of the phrase "I reckon" to give the dialog a bucolic flavor. Its use is way overdone and actually becomes irritating when the script has the phrase repeated every few seconds by everyone in the cast.

In time of colonization of America, the widower David Harvey (William Holden) lives in an isolated farm in the woods with his son Davey (Gary Grey). Father and son miss their wife and mother Susan, who has recently died, and David concludes that he needs a woman to educate his son properly and to cook and clean the house. David decides to travel with Davey to the nearby fort to seek a woman and the reverend proposes the bond servant Rachel (Loretta Young) for him. David buys Rachel, and Davey overhears the negotiation; but the reverend demands that they should marry to each other to have a decent life in the same house. The trio travels back to the farm and David and Davey treat Rachel like a slave without any respect or affection. When David's drifter friend Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) visits them, he stays for a couple of days with the family and treats Rachel respectfully like a lady. Then Jim courts Rachel, and David feels jealous and realizes how important she is for him. "Rachel and the Stranger" is an adorable romance and I loved this western. I did not know the concept of indentured servant in America, and the humiliating situation of Rachel is heartbreaking, fruit of the unpaid debts of her father. Loretta Young has a fantastic performance and William Holden and Robert Mitchum have hilarious moments with their witty lines. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "Rachel e o Estranho" ("Rachel and the Stranger")

At its most basic, "Rachel and the Stranger" is a domestic comedy set in the wilderness of 18th century Ohio. Director Norman Foster manages to pack more charm into each five minutes than most films have during their entire running length. At its most ambitious, "Rachel and the Stranger" is an allegorical story about the impact of a catalyst into a seemingly stable dynamic. In this case the stranger in the title, Jim (Robert Mitchum), visits the isolated farm of long-time friend David Harvey (William Holden), his young son Davey (Gary Gray), and their bond servant Rachel (Loretta Young). David bought Rachel (who is working off her late father's debts) after his wife died, needing a replacement to help raise Davey. He married her out of respect for social convention but has no intention of consummating the marriage. While David treats Rachel with respect and consideration, his son is openly resentful of the substitute mother. After some initial progress the threesome settles into a distanced existence, a rut from which there is little chance they will be able to escape on their own. But things quickly change when Jim stops by on his way to town. For the first time Rachel has someone who actively engages her. Jim's attentions build up Rachel's status in Davey's eyes while causing David to see her obvious attractions for the first time. But Foster doesn't limit things to this predictable interplay; he builds on it by having Rachel quickly come out of her guarded shell in response to Jim's interest. Even the makeup people get into the act as Young goes from the look of a plain pioneer woman to a subtle radiance.All four stars are excellent. It was probably Holden's best performance as he provides most of the humor with his growing attraction to Rachel and his increasing irritation with the attention Jim is paying to her. Young was about 10 years too old for her 25 year-old character but this is not really a factor as the age of the character is unimportant; you wonder why they did not simply change the one reference to her age after casting Young for the part. Young's acting tends to be underrated because of her later work as a television hostess but even her film work as a teenager was extraordinary. She was an especially good casting choice because the repressed Rachel needs to subtly convey a depth and dimensionality early in the film to make her later transformation plausible.Mitchum gives perhaps his liveliest performance as he seems to be having a lot of fun with his part. Gray is solid as always, one of those rare child actors who were not irritating after a few minutes on the screen.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.