RACHEL AND THE STRANGER: Blu-ray (RKO, 1948) Warner Archive

Robert Mitchum’s box office sway was put to the test, not by director, Norman Foster’s tender-hearted drama, Rachel and the Stranger (1948), but by RKO Radio Picture’s chutzpah to release the picture, timed to coincide with Mitchum’s release from prison for possession of marijuana. Mitchum’s 2-month stay in LA County lockup began inauspiciously when the actor was caught inhaling a toke at an intimate house party in Laurel Canyon. In hindsight, the incident appears to have been deliberately staged to bolster public support for the LAPD and its newly instituted ‘task force’ on illegal drugs; the tarnished image of the LA police, up against criticism for its failure to reign in public enemy, Mickey Cohen – who operated conspicuously in the City of Angels until 1951 when he was convicted by the U.S. Senate’s Kefauver Commission for (wait for it) ‘tax evasion’ and sentenced to barely 4 years in prison. With a modicum of remorse, Mitchum reportedly told friends at the time he considered his arrest ‘the bitter end’ to his career and marriage. But in fact, the opposite was quite true. His estrangement from wife, Dorothy, ended in mutual reconciliation (she stood by him through the scandal) and his career became hotter than ever when RKO showed a tidy profit of $395,000 with this modest programmer, to costar Loretta Young and William Holden, making Rachel and the Stranger the studio’s biggest grossing hit of the year.  

Screenwriters, Waldo Salt and Howard Fast have concocted a tidy little tale in Rachel and the Stranger; a sort of lyrical frontier fairytale that, only in its penultimate Indian raid, shows signs of falling back on the time-honored clichés of the Hollywood western. Until then, this intimate yarn owed more to the Cinderella fable than first meets the eye; the prince, reconstituted as the grungy, if platinum-haired and sexy-as-hell backwoodsman and widower, David Harvey played by a hearty, Bill Holden; the princess, recast as Young’s resilient novice, the bondswoman, Rachel, bought and paid for the paltry sum of $18. Consulting Parson Jackson (Tom Tully), David secures Rachel’s purchase as an indentured servant, marrying her to make their cohabitation respectable – if not in the eyes of the Lord, then, definitely, to satisfy the slum prudery of the nearby community. Rachel has no illusions about ‘her place’ in their lives. Nevertheless, her patience and kindness are repeatedly tested. At first, David regards his bride as strictly a worker bee – someone to chop the wood, cook their meals, look after the daily housekeeping, and, school his young son, Davey (Gary Gray) in book learning and Bible studies. But Davey bitterly resents Rachel. Meanwhile, the resolute David is still mourning his wife, Susan, buried on the hillside just beyond their sprawling farm. Intermittently, the men are attended by hunter/trapper, Jim Fairways (Mitchum), to whom Davey looks up, and, for whom Rachel will increasingly become enamored – to a point.  

Jim is smitten with Rachel. Moreover, he recognizes how shamefully she is treated by the menfolk. So, Jim elects to get to know Rachel better. He unearths her musical talents, something she shares in common with David’s late wife, and also encourages Rachel to feel more at ease, stirring her heart to reconsider his burgeoning friendship as something more. Alas, Rachel has taken her vows to David quite seriously. While she admires Jim for showing her compassion, she cannot abide him to take the place of her husband. Hence, Jim decides to lay his cards on the table. Prior to this, Rachel proves her mettle as a cracker-shot, having practiced for many hours in the cellar with David’s rifle; now, by felling a mountain cat that threatened the farm’s livestock. This earns her Davey’s respect. Jim’s too, who offers David $40 for Rachel’s bond – a sum to show the struggling farmer a tidy little profit. Incensed by the offer, David and Jim get into a knock-down/drag-out brawl. When Rachel discovers the reason behind their skirmish, she is insulted. What each of them considers their chivalrous act in defense of her honor is mere chest-thumping egotism run amok. Having had quite enough, Rachel packs her belongings and begins for the arduous journey back to the settlement fort on foot. Pursued on horseback by Jim, David and Davey, Rachel refuses to entertain any of their pleas or promises. Bedding down for the night in the forest, Jim and David reconcile their differences.

Alas, their peace is short-lived when Rachel spies the reflection of a blaze on the low-lying clouds - proof, the Shawnee Indians are once more on the war path. Encouraging Davey to accompany Rachel back to the settlement fort, Jim and David return to his farm, discovering it, seemingly abandoned and untouched – as yet – by the Shawnee. Alas, their reprieve is only momentary, as several of the tribe slowly begin to emerge from the forest, encroaching upon the land. David and Jim take refuge in his log cabin, firing muskets and rifles, even as the Shawnee devastate David’s livestock and set fire to his adjacent barn. Meanwhile Rachel, having encouraged Davey to go on ahead to the fort, has returned on horseback to join the men in defense of her home.  Barricading themselves, first in the cabin, then, the cellar, David, Jim and Rachel barely escape being smoked out by the Shawnee.  Their reprieve arrives by way of Parson Jackson and a small contingent of settlers who have made it to the farm in the nick of time to prevent their massacre. By dawn’s early light, David and Rachel assess the devastation to their land, electing to begin anew and rebuild. Realizing he has not a hope in hell to win Rachel’s heart, Jim departs to pursue his profession as a hunter/trapper, promising to return to them in the fall. David offers Rachel proof he has come to respect her as more than just his indentured servant girl, ordering Davey to refer to Rachel as ‘his mother’ and thereafter, declaring his own manly love with a sincere kiss.

Rachel and the Stranger is an affecting melodrama. Loretta Young strikes just the right chord here as the put-upon woman who absolutely refuses to concede her entire self-worth is wrapped up in her ability to properly carry out the household chores with no prospect for earning the love and esteem of the man who, thus far, remains in ‘name only’ her husband. The other great performance here is owed Robert Mitchum, seasoned in his laid-back delivery of dialogue, and ability to exude immense manly grace, even when behaving in unmanly ways. Case in point: Mitchum’s Jim pursues Rachel down to the stream where she has taken to do the laundry, under the guise of desiring to wash his own. She offers to help, but he pretends to be accustomed to such labor, then proceeds to ignore his chores and make love to her; oblivious, the downward rush has fast floated his long underwear into the advancing rapids. When Rachel points out as much, Mitchum’s Jim tears off in a clunky jaunt to retrieve his discarded apparel, falling into the stony brook and thoroughly soaking himself through to the bone. The scene, played strictly as a comedic respite, benefits from Mitchum’s ability to be unashamed of momentarily playing the part of the romantic fool. Yet, even as Jim slumps into the water, flailing to retrieve his laundry, Mitchum retains his presence and allure as the epitome of masculine chic – more graceful than clumsy, and infinitely more genuine than rehearsed, realigning his own masculinity with the character’s bashful pursuit of our heroine’s honor.

The weak link in the picture is Bill Holden – a star I greatly admire, but who undeniably came into his own as an actor a few years later, his toe-hold on the profession here, barely stable, but later ripened with age and experience. Holden is undeniably handsome in Rachel and the Stranger. It is easy to see why the eponymous Rachel would agree to wed David on the spot: good-looking eye candy with a subtler approach to what it means to be a leading man in Hollywood. But Holden is wholly unbelievable as the supposedly rough-hewn farmer/widower. Scenes where David shares poignant recollections about his late wife, crackle with a tinny underlay of faux sadness, distilled into pang expressions meant to infer remnants of regret, but instead, emanating a sort of disinterested dismay for having been left alone to carry the brunt of the scene as, ostensibly, its leading man. Mercifully, Holden is surrounded by expert players who, in tandem, make us aware of his shortcomings by direct comparison, but also, and, otherwise, compliment him in scenes in which they appear together, lending Holden credence to make the audience sincerely care about what happens to David Harvey.     

Despite her carefully crafted on-screen image, that of the squeaky clean ‘every woman’ whose Roman Catholic loyalties to God and the men in her life ran true and deep, Loretta Young was not without a few skeletons in her own closet – the most infamous, a love affair with co-star, Clark Gable, while making 1935’s The Call of the Wild, resulting in Young’s pregnancy and eventual giving birth to actress, Judy Lewis, whose parentage would remain one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets until Young’s death in 2000. Throughout her career, Young was fond of keeping a ‘swear jar’, charging anyone who used foul language on the set, 25 cents for the privilege: funds, she would then devote to her favorite charity. On the set of Rachel and the Stranger this ought to have yielded a lucrative stream of income, as Bob Mitchum could be counted upon to indulge in some fairly blue language. However, having been forewarned of his co-star’s proclivity for exacting money for speaking one’s mind, Mitchum kept a civil tongue in his head until shooting was completed. On their last day’s efforts, he casually strolled over to Young, tucking $20 into her jar and adding, “Here. This should just about cover everything I've been wanting to say to Loretta.”

Rachel and the Stranger arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) in a transfer that, regrettably, is a tad disappointing. Lest we forget, RKO’s asset management was not always the most progressive (nee, practically nonexistent), and, after the studio’s demise in the mid-50’s, this resulted in a general disregard for proper storage or curation of its formidable past. Having acquired the RKO library in a sell-off in the mid-1990’s, Warner Home Video has therefore been embroiled in something of a mad dash to salvage RKO’s history, employing all their technological wizardry to preserve what remains for future posterity. So, little – if any – blame ought to be ascribed to WAC for what is here. That said, Rachel and the Stranger looks very weak in hi-def. While a few scenes scattered throughout appear to have been sourced from stellar first-generation elements, possibly even an original negative, much of the movie is transparently derived from less than perfect second-generation sources and dupes. The result: a very thin image, suffering from wan contrast and a general loss in fine detail that belies Maury Gertsman’s bright and breezy cinematography. Almost entirely, we lose the mid-register tonality in this B&W image, contrast appearing slightly blown out, and, on the whole, the image adopting a hazy and soft veneer as a direct result. Infinitely watchable, but hardly stellar results. Not entirely certain if DNR has been employed to homogenize grain levels as they appear to be more invisible than anticipated. This could simply be as a result of working with less than fine grain elements. The audio is 1.0 DTS and adequate for this presentation, preserving the old Westrex audio with remarkable clarity and minimal hiss and pop. Save a tragically careworn and truncated theatrical trailer, there are NO extras. But the trailer’s abysmal quality does give the viewer some impression of what WAC was working with to begin their preservation efforts herein. Bottom line: Rachel and the Stranger is a modest, but memorable programmer from RKO. While the story has held up remarkably well over time, the existing film elements have not, and, RKO’s shortsightedness then continues to be reflected in this current 1080p rendering. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

0