Rachel, Rachel is now almost the definition of an obscure film. Despite being a film directed by a screen legend like Paul Newman and having a lot of awards attention at the time, this is one of those films that's fallen through the cracks. There's no dvd here and I've waited for it to come on tv for years. During an oscar season on TCM it's finally been shown so I leapt at the chance because Joanne Woodward was an incredible actress but it seems pretty much her whole film catalogue is rather obscure here.

I can really see why Newman got a lot of plaudits for this film (and why Woodward was appalled that he didn't get an oscar nomination for it) because this is a director's film. There are lots of flashbacks, fantasies, etc. weaved into the narrative, which follows a lonely schoolteacher in a small town who lives with her mother. Woodward is her usual wonderful self, with a film as lyrical as this you need an actress of her level of talent to anchor the film and let everything else flow. She does that nicely and the film is a good watch, if a little dated (but that can always be forgiven).

After seeing that I had a look online to see what I could find of hers (because prior to that I've only seen The Three Faces of Eve, The Long Hot Summer and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge where she had big roles) and I found Laurence Olivier's TV production of Come Back, Little Sheba on youtube. I've not seen the original film adaptation which won Shirley Booth an oscar, so I had no pre-conceived ideas coming in to it. It's a pretty good effort, Larry does go a bit too over the top at the end, but Woodward has a very nice presence throughout and does a fine job, as does a young Carrie Fisher who sadly never really kicked on from this period.

After trying (and failing) to find Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, which was the one I really wanted to see, I downloaded another uber-obscure film of hers that I'd heard about: the ridiculously titled The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (), which was another of Newman's directorial efforts. This is a brilliant performance, plain and simple. She plays a nightmare of a mother who is raising two children and she's so perfectly natural it defies belief. It doesn't have the showy big dramatic scenes of a Rachel, Rachel but she nails it so consistently I prefer it of the two turns. The film is also less showy in general, Newman's direction disappears nicely and the two daughters (Eli Wallach's daughter Roberta and Newman & Woodward's daughter Nell) give lovely performances. Extremely watchable, very talky, but entertaining enough.

Joanne Woodward

Somehow I stumbled across Ben Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid on sky and I ended up watching that rather than a nameless sporting event I was ostensibly watching. It's not as bad as I expected, but it's not very good either, they strip away almost everything about Michelle Monaghan that makes her interesting to me as an actress (so deliciously sassy in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and so soulful in Gone Baby Gone). It's a story about a guy who marries someone then immediately regrets it and starts chasing someone else on his honeymoon, and even the Farrelly Brothers who can make the strangest setups sweet (just see Shallow Hal) can never really satisfactorily make you invested in the characters and situations they're put in. Not something I'd recommend looking out for, but I won't pan it as it was certainly diverting.

So on to a film that could not be any more different to that silly comedy, I finally found some English subtitles for Liv Ullmann's second film as a director and I didn't hesitate to download it because it was never released here and of course there's no dvd either. I am a big fan of Ullmann's last film, Faithless, which she worked from an Ingmar Bergman script, but she was already a director in her own right, having had her first two films submitted to the oscars on behalf of Norway. The film I saw is Kristin Lavransdatter and it is apparantly the biggest hit in Norwegian history (something like 2/3rds of the population have seen it, which is about ... 3 million people ).

This is a medieval story of a girl (the eponymous character) who is betrothed to a man. She would prefer to marry someone else so she is sent to a convent for a year, where she meets a man whom she starts an affair with. The most striking thing about the film is the flair of Ullmann, she utilises the peerless Sven Nyqvist's talents as a cinematographer to the fullest and creates some striking imagery and fluid storytelling, in the proocess making the film feel shorter than its three hour runtime. Elisabeth Matheson does a fine job in the lead, but it is the supporting players who steal the show - Lena Endre (so unimaginably beyond exceptional in Faithless) gives a massive boost to the film towards the end and Henny Moan as Kristin's mother is even better.

The subplot between the father and mother is the most poignant of all, this is the film's problem and brilliance - the main characters are not particularly likeable and I was rooting against them getting together for the whole runtime but Ullmann still makes the film rattle on and retain an inherent interest in spite of this. The film was such a success in Norway because of the beloved novel it's based on plus the Ullmann factor and it actually received a very mixed reaction at the time. I found this to be a hidden gem that I'm very glad I found a way to see and am disappointed that Liv hasn't adapted the other novels because she fell out with the producers who own the rights. She's an ridiculously talented woman who I would love to see work more, be it in front of or behind the camera.