--- title: "Rachel, Rachel" year: 1968 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/rachel-rachel" fi1m_score: 73 critics_score: 65 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T05:05:54.780841+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T05:05:55.160420+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Rachel, Rachel (1968) Directed by Paul Newman · 1h 41m · MPA R · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 73** · Critics 65 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Joanne Woodward daydreams her way through a Connecticut summer and the daydreams are the honest part > Paul Newman’s first film as director is a small, patient portrait of a schoolteacher who has spent thirty-five years being nobody, and Joanne Woodward makes every held-back sentence count. The direction sometimes underlines what she has already said, but it is a fine evening. ## Synopsis Rachel Cameron (Joanne Woodward) is thirty-five, unmarried and teaching small children in the Connecticut town where she was born. She lives with her mother (Kate Harrington) in the flat above the funeral parlour her late father Niall (Donald Moffat) once ran and Hector Jonas (Frank Corsaro) runs now. She fetches the pills, makes up the fourth at bridge, and slips into daydreams in which she says and does what she never says or does. Her one friend, fellow teacher Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), talks her into a revival meeting at a tabernacle on the edge of town, where a young preacher (Terry Kiser) urges the congregation to love one another. And Nick Kazlik (James Olson), a boy from her school days, is back for the summer and asks her out. ## Review Paul Newman’s first film as director is small in every way that counts in its favour. It runs 101 minutes, it has one main character, and it takes place in a Connecticut town where nothing has happened for a long time and nothing is expected to. Stewart Stern’s screenplay comes from Margaret Laurence’s novel *A Jest of God*, and the studio sold it with the line “Who cares about a 35 year old virgin?” The film’s answer is that Rachel Cameron does, badly, and that most of the people around her have stopped noticing she is there. Joanne Woodward plays her as a woman who has been apologising since childhood. She walks with her elbows in, laughs a beat after everyone else, and talks to her class with a warmth she can find for nobody over the age of ten. Her real life is the one in her head. Rachel imagines a pupil collapsing at his desk and herself saving him; she imagines telling her mother the truth; she imagines lying in one of the coffins downstairs. Woodward never signals which is which. She simply behaves, and the film catches up. That trick belongs as much to Dede Allen, who had cut [*Bonnie and Clyde*](https://film.one/film/bonnie-and-clyde) (1967) the year before. The daydreams arrive without a dissolve or a change of light, run for a few seconds and are gone, so that more than once we believed something had happened and had to revise. Gayne Rescher shoots the town in a plain, hazy summer light and the flat above the funeral parlour in browns and cream, and he keeps the flashbacks to Rachel as a child (Nell Newman) at the same eye level as the adult scenes, which quietly says the child has never gone away. Domingo A. Rodriguez puts Woodward in cardigans and skirts a size too loose, clothes chosen to be unnoticed. The tabernacle sequence is the one we will remember. Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), the one friend Rachel has, brings her to a revival meeting, and a young preacher (Terry Kiser) works the congregation until people are weeping and touching strangers. Newman keeps the camera on Woodward rather than on the noise. We sat rigid with embarrassment for her, and then felt ashamed of ourselves, because the film had not asked us to laugh at anyone. Parsons is superb here and after, playing a woman whose feeling for Rachel is more than friendship, and the film treats her with a decency that was not common in 1968. The scenes at home are the best written. Kate Harrington’s Mrs Cameron has a heart condition and uses it the way other people use a raised voice, and her bridge evenings, with Rachel fetching the pills and the sandwiches, made us angry in a way that felt personal. James Olson’s Nick Kazlik, the boy from school back for the summer, is easy, amused and slightly hollow, which is partly the intention and partly a limit of the writing; we never learn quite enough about what he wants from her, and the film needs us to. Not all of it holds. Jerome Moross’s score is too sweet by half, coming in with strings whenever Rachel is alone to tell us she is sad, when Woodward has just spent a minute telling us in silence. Newman, directing for the first time, occasionally underlines: a fantasy insert too many, a reaction held a beat past its point. The middle stretch slackens, and the reviews that called it slow were not entirely unfair. The final turn, which we will not describe, is tidier than what comes before it and a little too pleased with its own irony. Set against the American films of its year, this one is unusual for spending its whole length inside one unremarkable woman’s head and finding it worth the visit. Newman does not show off. He gives his wife the frame and gets out of the way. Watch it at home, on a quiet evening, with nothing planned afterwards. It does not need a large screen and it does need patience. Bring some for Rachel; she has run out of her own. *Fi1m score 73, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 4 reviews in so far, the reviews lean warm, and they agree most readily on Joanne Woodward, whose attentive, unshowy playing of the schoolteacher Rachel is praised even by the one dissenter, who credits her with holding the film together. Most critics also admire the quiet, detailed observation of a small-town spinster’s life, and the more recent notices single out the film’s frankness about a woman’s sexual awakening and its sympathetic handling of the lesbian character Calla, with Estelle Parsons’s supporting turn noted alongside Woodward’s. The spread is wide, though: Variety finds the pace slow and Newman’s direction awkward, while Time Out considers the same debut impressive. ### Reviews we read (4) - **Film Comment**, Michael Koresky (80/100, inferred): The critic highlights how the film daringly centers a woman’s sexual awakening and liberation in a mainstream studio picture. It singles out the sympathetic portrayal of the lesbian character Calla and the strong performances by Joanne Woodward and Estelle Parsons. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-now-1968/) - **The New Yorker**, Penelope Gilliatt (80/100, inferred): The picture sensitizes audiences through its careful photography and performances, particularly Joanne Woodward's attentive portrayal of the schoolteacher Rachel and strong supporting turns. It stands out for its inquiring character study and gentle, detailed realism rather than topical trends. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1968/09/07/on-and-off-target) - **Time Out**, PH (70/100, inferred): An impressive directorial debut for Newman starring his wife Joanne Woodward. The film captures the quiet desperation of a spinster's life in small-town America through wry observation of her character. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/rachel-rachel) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): The film is a low-key melodrama about a spinster awakening to life, but it moves too slowly to its ironic climax. Direction is awkward, though Joanne Woodward's performance prevents it from being a complete shambles. [Read](https://variety.com/1967/film/reviews/rachel-rachel-1200421575/) ## Details - **Director:** Paul Newman - **Director:** Paul Newman - **Screenplay:** Stewart Stern - **Novel:** Margaret Laurence - **Cinematography:** Gayne Rescher - **Editor:** Dede Allen - **Music:** Jerome Moross - **Costume design:** Domingo A. Rodriguez - **Producer:** Paul Newman - **Cast:** Joanne Woodward as Rachel Cameron; James Olson as Nick Kazlik; Kate Harrington as Mrs. Cameron; Estelle Parsons as Calla Mackie; Donald Moffat as Niall Cameron; Terry Kiser as Preacher; Frank Corsaro as Hector Jonas; Bernard Barrow as Leighton Siddley - **Runtime:** 1h 41m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 26 August 1968 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $780,000 - **Box office:** $3 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $2.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AU, CA, GB, RO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1969: Best Actress (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Brief Encounter* (1945), Fi1m 90: Another quiet life briefly lit up, and Celia Johnson’s face doing the arithmetic — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/brief-encounter.md) - *Summertime* (1955): Katharine Hepburn alone in Venice, wanting something and afraid to ask for it - *Wanda* (1970): Barbara Loden’s drifting woman is the rougher, sadder cousin of Rachel Cameron - *Autumn Sonata* (1978): Bergman’s mother and daughter say aloud what the Camerons only think - *An Angel at My Table* (1990), Fi1m 87: Jane Campion on a shy woman with a large inner life and nowhere to put it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/an-angel-at-my-table.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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