The viewer and the strange one.

 

Author: dbdumonteil

24 November 2001

 

The IMDb recommends "the sound of music" if you like this one,and it is a very smart choice.While Young ,Mitchum and the boy are strumming the guitar and the spinet,in front of a grumpy Holden,I can't help thinking of Maria/Andrews ,her baron and brats singing a little song in front of the bored rigid baroness Parker(She mumbles something like:"I wish I could have brought my harmonica! ").Songs play a prominent part in this movie:Mitchum's tunes depict the life of the people he's watching.

 

Arguably a low-budget movie,"Rachel and the stranger" is nevertheless more than a poor man's "sound of music".Actually it's a strange work,which cannot be categorized.Apparently a western ,but western afficionados won't be satisfied because the plot is pared to the essential:even the Indians who -hardly- appear are symbolic:the house had to be distroyed anyway -as "Rebecca" 's house as an user cleverly remarked-.This is a perfect example of a faux western (Don Siegel's "beguiled"(1971)is another one).

 

Some details are intriguing and foretells other stories:outside "the sound of music " (which is -few people know it- a remake of a German movie "die Trapp Familie"(1957) besides),Mitchum's clothes sometimes look like the ones he will wear in "night of the hunter" (1955),the spinet lends a baroque touch as Lilian Gish's piano will do in Huston's "the unforgiven" (1960).

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At the beginning of the movie,Young is nothing more than some kind of slave,she is sold as Giuseppina (Giulietta Masina) in Fellini's "la strada" (1954).As for the house,it makes me think of a "little house (in the prairie)" in black and white!