Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

not as good as all the hype

A Disappointing Continuation

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Directed by Norman Foster, this 80 minute drama gives one a real sense of the role of women in the pioneering days of the old West. Times were a lot different then, and women were expected to do chores from sun up to sundown with little thanks or appreciation while their menfolk cleared the land, farmed it, and caught or killed something for her to cook as their dinner.Loretta Young plays Rachel while William Holden plays the titled "stranger", a widower with a preteen son (Gary Gray), who "buys" her to replace his recently departed wife. His wife had wanted her son to be raised properly, as a boy in the East would be, despite the wilderness in which they lived.So, in order to provide the boy with the proper education and schooling, Holden's character marries a bonded (because she was repaying her deceased father's debt) woman, Rachel, after paying "18 (dollars) plus 4" (more later) for her. The parson (Tom Tully) and his wife (Sara Haden) had convinced him that living under the same roof with another woman wouldn't be proper unless they were husband and wife.Holden's character, David Harvey, proceeds in treating Rachel like chattel until his old friend, and wandering hunter Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) comes to call. Apparently David and Jim had competed for the affections of the woman that became David's first wife. She had married David because he was more proper, and less wild than Jim, who thus far had shown no willingness to settle down. Davey (Jr.) would love to do as Jim does, which was the main impetus for David to go and find a replacement "wife" in the first place, to respect his first's wishes and raise Davey proper.However, soon Jim has become a long-term guest of the Harveys, and (seeing the way that Jim treats his "in-name-only" wife) David begins to notice that Rachel is more than just his "slave", but a woman in her own right. He discovers that she has musical skills (Mitchum sings too!) like his first wife, and she makes it a point to secretly learn to shoot like his first wife could as well. It is the latter of these skills which wins over his boy Davey.Eventually, David and Jim are repeating their earlier pattern of competing for the same woman. Fortunately, some real Western action involving the native Cheyenne tribe is introduced into the story, which saves the film from stalling and wraps up the story nicely, if predictably.

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 (1947) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Highly entertaining western/comedy/drama has a man (William Holden) losing his wife but buying a slave woman (Loretta Young) and marrying her so that she can school his kid. Things get complicated when he doesn't pay her too much attention and his friend (Robert Mitchum) comes back from the hunting season. For the most part this is your typical love triangle but the incredible performances from the three leads makes this incredibly hard not to love. You've just gotta love a movie that opens with Mitchum walking through the woods singing and playing a guitar. Young and Mitchum also do a duet later in the film that is quite nice. The chemistry between the three stars makes this film work a lot better than it probably should have. There's some nice laughs at the end when the two men finally fight over her as well as suspense during an Indian attack.

Lightweight, predictable fare that's nothing to write home about, but a really enjoyable movie nonetheless that I gladly watch anytime it's on TCM.William Holden plays a recent widower who realizes his son needs a mother. He goes into town and "buys" a wife (Loretta Young), whom he treats with respect (he's a gentleman) but also quite aloofly (he's still deeply in love with his dearly departed wife and is not ready to move on). Predictably, the boy resents the presence of this new woman and isn't ready for her or anyone else to take his mother's place. (You just know the boy and Holden are gonna come around by the end of the flick and the three of them are gonna be one big happy family.) Add in charming, wandering, singing-and-guitar-playing rogue Robert Mitchum and you've got quite an enjoyable story. Mitchum appreciates Young and strikes up a friendship with her, which piques Holden's curiosity over this woman he's previously overlooked.Loretta Young is supposedly lovely in this film -- if you like her, that is. Personally, she's never caught my fancy and I've never understood her appeal, though I never let her presence in a movie keep me from watching it; that would be a shame and I'd miss some good flicks if I did! (OK, so ding this review if you're a LY fan and I dissed your lady, sorry! :) William Holden is ... well, um, drool, pant, sigh ... absolutely gorgeous in this movie. He is reason alone to watch it! Robert Mitchum isn't too bad either, and has a surprisingly nice singing voice (yes that's actually him doing all that singing).