THE RAIN PEOPLE: Blu-ray (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1969) Warner Archive

Caught somewhere in the crosshairs of the old Hollywood/new Hollywood paradigm, it is virtually impossible to imagine a more guileless and personal tome emerging on the screen than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969). Consider some of the more or less successful pics from that year: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, Hello Dolly!, Sweet Charity, Midnight Cowboy, Anne of the Thousand Days, and, Easy Rider…to name but a handful. The struggle between indie-plotted/studio-funded projects, and, studio-sanctioned/homegrown super productions, suffering from their own mothballed elephantiasis created a cultural rift in terms of tastes and preferences.  And in the middle of it all is The Rain People. Shot on a shoestring of $750,000 (only Easy Rider cost less - $450,000 while the costliest, Hello Dolly! topped out at $25 million), The Rain People’s anemic allotment is nevertheless used to exceptional effect. There is a naturalistic quality to the piece, shot across 18 different states with a leading lady – Shirley Knight – who, like her screen alter ego, Natalie Ravenna, was pregnant at the time. To keep tight reigns on his budget, Coppola held steadfast to a 10-person crew (it takes more people to shoot a 30-sec. commercial), hiring out from the local talent pool as required. Essentially, The Rain People is a two-person ‘drawing room’ tragedy, taken to the open road, with its top-billed star, James Caan cast as ex-footballer, Jimmy ‘Killer’ Kilgannon, an all-American whose career is cut short after a skirmish has left him with a debilitating head injury, a steel plate in his head, and, the intellectual wherewithal of a pre-teen.

In the last third, Coppola’s screenplay introduces us to Robert Duvall’s highway patrolman, Gordon who, despite his initial congeniality, is soon revealed as a short-fused sadist on whose sexual frustration, the denouement pivots. Running barely 1hr. 42 mins., Coppola spends the bulk of The Rain People establishing Long Island housewife, Natalie Ravenna’s inability to know her own mind. She’s pregnant, but leaves her husband, Vinnie (Robert Modica) asleep in their marital bed at 6am, only to waffle in her first contact with her ineffectual parents (Sally Gracie as Beth/Alan Manson as Lou) before taking to the open road, bound for nowhere in particular. Along this fateful trip, Natalie picks up Jimmy Kilgannon - a hitchhiker, purposelessly pausing on the gravel shoulder for anyone to take an interest. Though he is of few words, the shortcomings of Jim’s mental acuity is not, as yet, revealed. And thus, Natalie plots to seduce him (one last fling before presumably going back to her husband); all set to a silly game of ‘Simon Says…’ This turns rancid when Killer follows Nat’s commands implicitly while never quite able to pick up on her overt suggestions to take the lead. Instead, Jimmy confides he is on route to be reunited with his girlfriend, Ellen (Laurie Crews) – an utterly heartless creature whose easy-going father, Artie (Andrew Duncan) once offered him a job at his drive-in after graduation from college.

The next morning, Natalie drives Jimmy to Artie’s homestead where she quickly surmises there is no place for him. Indeed, Ellen is brutal in assessing Jimmy as a ‘retard’ with whom she cannot even abide to be in the same room. Natalie and Jim depart along the open road. But she has grown ever-more frustrated at having picked up a man whom she must now watch over like a beloved pet.  Deliberately losing Jim during a small-town parade, Natalie later finds him waiting at the bus terminal, never having purchased a ticket to ride. Twice thereafter, Natalie tries to divest herself of Jim’s presence – each time, setting him up with a potential job. The second time ends disastrously as Jim is in the employ of ruthless sideshow collector, Mr. Alfred (Tom Aldredge) whose out-of-the-way menagerie is a posterchild slum for animal cruelty. Alfred agrees to pay Jim wages to clean out the cages, but then absconds with Jim’s thousand dollars – given by his ex-alma mater as a stipend to live on while he seeks gainful employment. In the meantime, in her hasty departure from Alfred’s, Natalie is pulled over for speeding by highway patrolman, Gordon. He is, at first, empathetic to her plight, but informs Natalie she must pay the ticket at the magistrate’s office, adjacent Alfred’s farm. Returning to the scene, Gordon and Natalie discover Jim has since liberated all of Alfred’s furry creatures, now running amuck.  

Alfred agrees to refund Jim a measly $200. Natalie takes Jim into her care, but later, dumps him on the side of the road, agreeing to meet up with Gordon for a drive-in movie instead.  Afterward, Gordon takes Natalie to his trailer where she finds he has a precocious, but foul-mouthed daughter, Rosalie (Marya Zimmet). While Gordon insists to Natalie, his first wife (Eleanor Coppola) meant nothing, we see in a flashback just how much her premature death in a housefire impacted him. After Rosalie inquires whether or not she can watch her father and Natalie make love, Gordon angrily drives out Rosalie from the trailer. Natalie is no longer in the mood. But Gordon has decided it matters not. He will take what he wants. Meanwhile, Rosalie and Jimmy have found one another and bonded in the playground adjacent the trailer park. She confides in him. She likes to watch adults having sex. He learns what has become of Natalie. Escaping Gordon’s trailer, tearstained and concealed only in a bedsheet, Natalie tries to get away. Jimmy attacks Gordon to defend her honor. Jim’s football training affords him the upper hand in this fight until Rosalie retrieves her father’s pistol and shoots him dead. As the rest of the residents gather around, a sorrowful Natalie promises to look after Jim, whose corpse she tries to drag to safety.

The Rain People signals towards the seventies’ looming affinity for sordid, character-driven melodramas, exorcising imperfect relationships in an America festering and/or imploding under the weight of its own moral equivalency. In a world without judgement, nothing makes sense and no one really matters. These dramas became more of a main staple in American picture-making just a few short years later. But in 1969, Hollywood had yet to make their transition complete or, completely satisfying. So, even in its own time, The Rain People was out of step with expectations. Shirley Knight gives us a mesmerizing portrait of the advantaged housewife frantic to eschew her domestic claustrophobia. Tragically, James Caan is out of his depth as the cerebrally-disfigured /one-time man of action, now virtually incapable even to comprehend when he is unwanted. Caan’s interpretation of what it means to be mentally challenged veers into a stoic dumb show. He seems to have misplaced both his own thoughts on how to proceed, as well as his acting chops, relying on blank and squinty-eyed lost stares into the horizon. It’s a clumsy and dull interpretation, with no room for the essential spark of repeatedly thwarted romantic chemistry to be explored between Jim and Natalie.

Robert Duvall’s wayward cop is a minor revelation. He and Shirley Knight share an abstract, kinetic connection. However, in the brief interactions Duvall shares with 11-yr.-old Marya Zimmet, their heated father/daughter exchanges crackle with insidious delight. It’s comedic, yet heartrending. Zimmet, born to hippies in Greenwich Village, and, only to appear in three movies before finding her creative niche as a jazz/folk singer while working as a school psychologist, is an exceptionally intuitive actor. Here, the kid really turns up the sting of being raised by a delinquent dad who would rather blunt his sorrow in meaningless sex than commit to figuring out the rage of his emotionally-distraught child. Difficult to classify The Rain People as an outright artistic failure, because Coppola seems deeply invested in the story. It’s just he has grave difficulties letting the rest of us in to share in the ultimate importance of these lost and meandering figures of fun. Knight’s pampered Natalie is adrift. All we know of Natalie Ravenna is she desperately wants out of her marriage and pregnancy. But where’s the impetus for such a seismic decision? Is Nat’ anxious to be loved, just not by her husband, or is she merely despairing to turn back the clock to a moment when indiscriminate sex was preferred to actually hunkering down in a serious relationship?

Remember, it is the arc of Natalie’s erroneously rechristened proto-feminist devolution from wife/mother to abortion-seeking tart we are supposed to find so gosh darn compelling. Had the character come to some grave epiphany – one way or the other – The Rain People might have satisfied. Alas, Natalie Ravenna’s journey is not a ‘knight’s errand (pun intended); just a casual slap off her privileged tuffet, without this character ever establishing, even for herself, precisely what she intends as its replacement. It’s a rough/tough sell, because American movies waffle in ambiguity. Plots go nowhere when characters lack the wherewithal to actually move beyond their own minds and make clearer, more decisive statements that propel the action. The characters we meet in The Rain People neither advance nor regress. They merely dangle on a mobile that goes around and around without anyone getting any wiser to themselves. Again, in a world stricken with moral equivalency, it is the true innocent who must take it on the chin. So, Caan’s simpleton gets sacrificed. Pity that…or not, because Caan doesn’t do much with his character – either, as written, or even adlibbed.  So, Jim’s big death scene is not earth-shattering, despite Natalie’s emotional outburst. Me thinks this lady doth protest too much!

The Rain People arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) in a pleasing 1080p transfer capturing the stark, naturally-lit intensity in Bill Butler’s cinematography. The picture was ‘restored’ by Warner Bros. in conjunction with American Zoetrope. And everything here looks authentic to period film stocks. Grain is subtle and exceptional. Flesh tones are nicely rendered. Occasional pops of color, like the red stripes in Caan’s training jacket, are expertly handled, as is contrast. Subtler nuances and fine details are also revealed.  The 2.0 DTS audio is adequate, though just. WAC has afforded us zero extras. So, what’s here is the movie, proficiently remastered for future generations to study and/or rediscover. In the interim, The Rain People has developed a cult following, largely on the enduring fascination with the film legacy of Francis Ford Coppola. As a personal project, Coppola gets high marks. As a pop-u-tainment, The Rain People leaves something to be desired. Bottom line: for Coppola completionists. The Blu-ray is an A-1 effort. Others can choose to pass and not feel as though they have missed anything of artistic/social significance.

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

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

0