lasttimeisaw On the road, driving aimless westward, New York housewife Natalie Ravenna (Knight) finds out her unexpected pregnancy and needs some alone time, so she leaves her asleep husband a note and a breakfast, then starts her peregrination all by herself.Coppola's fourth feature and he was 29 when the movie is shot, THE RAIN PEOPLE is an unsung gem prior to THE GODFATHER (1972), using extreme close-ups, mood-reflecting camera-work, Coppola retains a sober and intuitive acumen to guide Natalie on a liberation trip where she battles between her maternal instinct to a former college footballer Jimmy (Caan) and her flirtation with a macho highway patrolman Gordon (Duvall), to an end where an impending crime of passion arrives as a fatalist blow to a woman who is brave enough to go out on a limb, flout social conventions and abides by her true feelings, no matter how fickle they are.Caan's Jimmy, whose nickname Killer turns out to be rather ironic, first appears as an ingenuous hitchhiker, a suitable object for some uncomplicated dalliance, but in a tantalising segment of playing Simon Says in the motel room, the libidinous foreplay of dominance and obedience hits a sudden swerve when Natalie realises Killer is a simpleton suffering from brain damage during a match, and now is discharged from the college with a compensation of a thousand dollars. Since then, Killer becomes a sweet burden to her, his sweetheart refuses to take him in, he botches the job she finds for him, what can she do with him? She has her own issues to deal with, especially when Gordon comes into her life, she cannot hold the responsibility to take care of Killer anymore, his affection for her can never be reciprocal and the world is too cruel a place for him, he will be eaten alive. The upshot is a bit rash to plunge Killer to the locale of the trailer park, but it strikes home with an emotional upheaval mirrors our own lament of the departed innocence and a pure soul.The cast is extraordinary, two-times Oscar nominee Shirley Knight imprints an indelible mark with her pyrotechnic rendering and James Caan is never so unassumingly moving, whereas Robert Duvall is virile and menacing, yet, Gordon's own tale-of-woe implies the duplicity of his character, a worldly-wise kind but fatally flawed.In the form of a frivolous road movie, THE RAIN PEOPLE is an in-depth examination of a woman balking at a life-altering moment, how she has to come to term with the responsibility of bringing up a new life in this world (will she keep the baby? it is an open question, but the ending suggests yes), through her chance-meeting with a child-like Killer and also sharply chastises a morally downgrading society, male-chauvinistic, avaricious and wanting of sympathy. It is a wonderful movie which is criminally underestimated by its time but has no difficulty to pick up new audience, not just as a footnote of Coppola's massively hallowed THE GODFATHER and its sequel.

dougdoepke Five years earlier and I doubt the movie could have found a distributor. It's slow, contemplative, and nothing much happens until the end. But for those who follow inner conflict as well as outer, it's a stunner. Pregnant suburban wife Knight hits the road, fleeing a consuming marriage. But she's not just fleeing, she's also aimlessly searching—note how she first bypasses Caan before hazily backing up. Trouble is Caan's brain damaged, and in need of adult supervision. Now Knight's in a pickle. On one hand, her budding maternal instinct kicks in; on the other, a grown child is too much what she's fleeing from. Thus, the confusion of her life mounts. But hey, she meets macho cop Duvall who's got adventure written all over him. Yet he turns out to be domineering and mean, probably too much like the husband she's abandoned. This leads up to an ending that is both touching and ironic.For expansive post-war couples the suburbs were liberating; but a generation later and younger folks like Knight felt confined. This is a 60's road picture feminine style. When Americans get restless or unhappy, they head westward in frontier tradition. So why shouldn't a woman, even when alone and vulnerable. The acting here is outstanding, and it better be since character carries the story or what there is of it. I really like Caan who shows why less is sometimes more. And get a load of those desolate roadsides, no cosmetic Hollywood here. Too bad the film's so obscure in the Coppola canon. All in all, it's a telling reflection of a restless time, perhaps even of what some call the human condition. However, I can understand why it's not everyone's cup of tea, and certainly a long way from Coppola's next, The Godfather (1972).

moonspinner55 Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed this stunningly personal story of a married woman's flight from her husband--and the reality that perhaps the youthful glee and excitement of her younger years are behind her. We learn little about this woman's marriage except that she has been feeling her independence slipping away as of late; she's also recently learned she's pregnant, which has further complicated her heart (she doesn't want to be a complacent wifey, despite the maternal way she speaks to her husband over the phone). She meets two men on her journey: a former college football hero who--after an accident during a game--has been left with permanent brain damage, and a sexy, strutting motorcycle cop who has a great deal of trouble in his own life. The clear, clean landscapes (as photographed by the very talented Wilmer Butler) are astutely realized, as are the characters. Shirley Knight, James Caan, and Robert Duvall each deliver strong, gripping performances, most especially since these are not very likable people in conventional terms. Some scenes (such as Knight's first call home from a pay-phone, or her first night alone with Caan where they play 'Simon Says') are almost too intimate to watch. Coppola toys with reality, turning the jagged memories of his characters into scrapbooks we've been made privy to. He allows scenes to play out, yet the editing is quite nimble and the film is never allowed to get too heavy (there are at least two or three very frisky moments). It's a heady endeavor--so much so that the picture was still being shown at festivals nearly five years later. Some may shun Coppola's unapologetic twisting of events in order to underline the finale with bitter irony, however the forcefulness and drive behind the picture nearly obliterate its shortcomings. *** from ****

MisterWhiplash In some scenes in the Rain People, Francis Ford Coppola's precursor to his hey-day of the seventies, there is the mark of a similar situation to 1969's Easy Rider, but not exactly in the same reference frame. Here we have a drama about disconnected people from society, in some ways alienated by the choices or by limits imposed by one mean or another. It's one of those rare original dramas where some scenes stand alone as total knockouts. Even with such a low-string budget and a very freewheeling, so to speak, attitude about filming the movie, Coppola is able to capture everything that needs to be said through these clearly defined characters and the curved, unexpected degrees of one character versus the helplessness of another, or vice versa, or both. And, as one might be inclined seeing as how it is very much about the cutaways of suburban life of the 1960s, it has that escapism of the film mentioned before, but of a more concrete, near timeless quality with the drama and the underlying issues. In a way, if Bergman were on route as a quasi-guerrilla 20-something filmmaker out to get the strange truths of everyday outsiders, this might be it.But along with all of the very direct and sometimes self-conscious photography (though also with a more documentary approach at times, akin with its indeterminable characters), the actors all fit into place. Shirley Knight, an actress I'm not too familiar with, has a complex, diverging role as a pregnant wife running off in a sort of existentialist conundrum of what life is there to have. There are moments of some awe-inspiring acting by her, and one of my favorites (if not my favorite) is when she is on the telephone calling her husband the first time. Such a tense scene on both ends, and in every small gesture and inflection of a word so much about her is spoken with so little. It's extraordinary in ways that mirror others in Coppola's films. Then comes in the character of 'killer' played by James Caan. This, too, is a dangerous character to take on, as it is a mix of childish bewilderment and amusement with scarred memories. Think Forrest Gump if he didn't make it past the football and wit. It's one of his best, actually, by being the most minimalist- for a guy who's usually playing tough guys in movies, here's one that also is part of the crux of the story and of Knight's character. Also very good in a supporting role is Robert Duvall as a cop with a rough side and rather checkered past; kind of an early sample of other defected characters he would play later on in his career.So the characters, and what Coppola risks in having an uneasiness running in them, are really what make up the film, as whatever story there is it is definitely not resolved in the usual way you might think or expect. The last ten or so minutes are like others in Coppola's work, where the specific tragedies on all sides are undercut by the emotional- and psychological- implications this will leave on the principles are amplified to the sublime and sad. This is, for its time, brave on the part of what is trying to be represented (in both the freedom as well as the flaws and ambiguities) in the subject matter. And the style of the picture adds a fragmented kind of view onto it all with quick flashbacks that are graphic and self-contained in a contrast with the longer shots in some crucial scenes. It's a road movie of its period, but its also got a lot more working than it would under another filmmaker with less chances to take on the nature of these outcast characters. One of the best films of 1969.