Customer Reviews

The Rain People [VHS]

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4 star:		(6)
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A brilliant character study of a pregnant woman who runs out on her husband and hits the road with no destination in mind. Years ahead of its time with its feminist viewpoint, this early Coppola film is sadly one of his least viewed. Shirley Knight is excellent as the troubled woman and James Caan is perfect as killer, a brain damaged ex-football player who Knight ends up befriending. The Rain People is a good example of 70's cinema when characters mattered more than special effects or action-packed plots.

This movie isn't without its faults -- find me one that isn't -- but as one of the earliest movies about a woman taking her life into her own hands, it stands as one of the all-time greats. Compare this to the much better known "Thelma and Louise," in which two women, merely bored, take off on their own and wreak a path of destruction for no other purpose than to prove they can. By contrast, Shirley Knight's character is suffering real and believable angst for a concrete purpose, and actually does something about it. Even minor characters are three-dimensional, and it's interesting to see James Caan and Robert Duvall before they settle into the predictable stock roles that continue to dominate their careers. Watch the credits closely -- this was one of George Lucas' first movies.

Three years before THE GODFATHER (1972) was released, director Francis Ford Coppola and actors James Caan and Robert Duvall worked together on THE RAIN PEOPLE. Scripted by Coppola, this movie combines feminism with elements of John Steinbeck's 1937 novella, OF MICE AND MEN.

According to Jimmy 'Killer' Kilgannon, "rain people" are normal-sized folks who are made of raindrops; when they cry themselves out, the rain people disappear.

SYNOPSIS--
Natalie Ravenna (Knight) is pregnant and panicked. Feeling trapped, Nat flees her Long Island marriage to Vinny (Modica--voice only) and hits the road to points unknown. She picks up an attractive young crewcut-topped hitchhiker. 'Killer' Kilgannon (Caan) played varsity football until a severe head injury left him brain-disabled. Killer remained at the college, raking leaves for them until he was given $1000 and told to go away.

Feeling sympathy for this sweet but simple-minded fellow, Natalie offers a ride to West Virginia, where Killer believes his ex-girlfriend's dad has a drive-in theater job waiting for him. When they arrive unannounced, Ellen (Crews) tells her father not to hire Killer and she rudely demands that he and Nat leave.

Natalie abandons Killer in Chattanooga, but has second thoughts. Continuing west, they stop at a small Nebraska town, where Nat finds a utility job for Killer at a reptile zoo. His new employer, Mr. Alfred (Aldredge) convinces the young man to hand over all his cash for safekeeping. Natalie fears Alfred will cheat Killer out of that savings but is more concerned about escaping alone.

Nat drives hurriedly off and gets stopped by motorcycle cop Gordon (Duvall) for speeding. A $40 citation must be paid at the reptile zoo. Despite her pleas not to force a return there, Gordon escorts Nat back and they encounter a scene of chaos. Killer has let hundreds of chicks out of their cages. Mr. Alfred discharges him and as Justice of the Peace he levies an $800 fine for property damage.

Again, Natalie is stuck with Killer. She's arranged a date with the cop and tells Killer to wait in her car. While Nat visits Gordon's trailer home, Killer wanders around outside. He peeks in a window and sees Gordon trying to force himself on Nat, so Killer angrily tears open the trailer door and attacks the cop.....


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(6.9) The Rain People (1969) - James Caan/Shirley Knight/Robert Duvall/Marya Zimmet/Tom Aldredge/Laura Crews/Andrew Duncan

Shirley Knight plays a young Long Island housewife who finds herself pregnant and unsure she wants the child. She bolts out the door and hits the road in a station wagon. She feels trapped in her life and decides to break out by picking up a hitchhiker, James Caan. He turns out to be a brain-damaged ex-football player who can hardly fend for himself. She feels responsible for him, can't dump him - so her bolt for freedom becomes a very real restraint on her life. That, of course, is the main point of the movie, which was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola - a good theme for sure, and for the most part done well, despite our being hit over the head with it to make sure we get it.

Caan is excellent as the deadhead; Knight is good, too, but hardly a sympathetic character. This was one of the first of many movies about women questioning their roles in society, and one of the better ones because of its emphasis on responsibility. The ending is shattering and ironic, with Caan dying in Knight's arms after trying to "save" her from what he thinks is an attack on her by a cop (played by Robert Duvall). The movie has sticking power and does not evaporate from the mind like many movies do.

THE RAIN PEOPLE (1969)

Shirley Knight, James Caan, and Robert Duvall are all brilliant in Coppola's existential masterpiece.

Filmed for under a million dollars at the time, Coppola's European aesthetics pervade the desolate highways and shattered psyches of the American West in a film that the director has unabashedly claimed to be one of his personal favorites.

There's no way that a film of this scope would get financial backing in an epoch that is driven wholly by box office receipts, and this film, like many others from that period, revolutionised the quality of American cinema, raising the bar for many, many years to come.

This period of the late sixties and early-to-mid seventies represents the artistic height of American cinema, and THE RAIN PEOPLE - a minor film crafted by one of America's finest directors - deservedly sits amongst the EASY RIDER's and the TAXI DRIVER's; film's that encapsulate the decline of the counterculture revolution, and the forthcoming anxieties that were spawned from post-Vietnam America.

Before Coppola signed on to make THE GODFATHER, he had said that all he wanted to do was write and direct original screenplays. THE CONVERSATION was born out of this pretense, and look at how significant that film is in Coppola's oeuvre.

THE RAIN PEOPLE is of the same high-standard, and now that it's available for the first time on DVD, audiences can finally get a glimpse of a purely 'independent' Coppola, and how he perceived himself artistically before THE GODFATHER hurricane hit only a few years later.

5/5

I saw this in 1971 on an outdoor screen in a Construction Camp in Northern Australia when I was 19. It made enough of an impression that I still remember it, although I've never seen it on TV since. Caan (Pre-Godfather) was good, the girl was OK, but Robert Duvall as a single parent Cop living in a trailer in some one-horse armpit town in Middle America was textbook perfect.

If Francis Ford Coppola is to get back into the game it would do him no harm in returning to small films like this and "The Conversation" as a point of reference. This film seers itself into your consciousness more than a million "One From the Hearts" ever will. The film concerns itself with a young Long Island housewife(Shirley Knight) who feels trapped in her marriage and takes it on the lam to sort things out. She's two months pregnant and is confused as to whether to carry it to term. Along the way she picks up a handsome ex-college football player(James Caan) and soon it becomes apparent that he is more than a little slow on the intake. Despite her half-hearted efforts to ditch him she cannot extricate herself from him, probably a combination of his neediness and her nascent maternal instincts. In Nebraska, she hooks up with an apparently nice highway patrolman(Robert Duvall) and it's her encounter with him that brings the story to a memorably tragic conclusion. If one is to describe "The Rain People" it would be to say it is humanistic. The characters are flawed but Coppola paints them as inticate human beings. Two things stand out here for me. The heartbreaking telephone conversations between Knight and the husband she left behind. The fact that one is a disembodied voice adds power to these encounters. Caan's performance is one for the ages. His Jimmy is not a cliched depiction of a mentally challenged person but one of great nuance. His work here stands alongside his Sonny in "The Godfather". This film may not be well known but that doesn't obscure it's greatness.

If this title should EVER see the light of day on DVD, it should include as one of its supplemental materials the
hour-long 16mm documentary, "Filmmaker" shot by George Lucas (now a standard instructional film in most major film programs.)

The widely renowned Joseph Campbell expressed once that the religion has been written in poetic language, but has been read in prose.

If we bring this statement into the cinematographic lexicon, we might establish surprising parallelisms. "Rain people" is a crude and devastating portrait about losers along the way; it deals with the life and times of anonymous human beings, trapped in the web of the routine and existential hopeless, so typical in those times in which the state of things surmounted by far, the context of many people around the world.

A desperate and bored house wife,(who discovers is pregnant)decides to make a crucial decision, so she leaves her home and flees with her car. But in the road she will pick up a retarded ex football star who has a metal plate in his head (a very personal tribute of Coppola to Renoir's "The Great illusion") .

The movie ends abruptly, because it's a logical consequence of a fevered state of anima.

This film has been regarded by many people, a shocking cult movie, because like a dark glass, reflects a horrid ambiance by then.

If not, ask yourself why the Academy Award was precisely to "Midnight Cowboy" and why there were so many films that mirrored with major or minor impact this social reality: Easy rider, Zabriskie Point, If, Strawberry's statement, Seconds, Shock corridor, The chase, The naked kiss, Cool hand Luke, Adalen 31, Do-des ka den, Pierrot le fou or Belle de jour.

1969 was the year of the road film, no small part due to Easy Rider. Rain People is one of the best of these.

Pregnent Natalie leaves her husband in New York and picks up a hitch-hicker. Killer, James Caan, is a ex-football player who has a brain injury. Despite several attempts to find him a job and board on the road, Killer is a lost soul--a man-child with no purpose. Natalie, unwittingly, becomes his care taker. Natalie is running scared, however, and is conflicted about her role.

This is absolutley a charactor driven film. The plot is simple and would be mondane if it not for the interaction between the charactors. Watching how Killer connects himself to Natale and how she wants to let him go but can't makes a fascinating dynamic. He wants to find a place to belong but knows he can't. She wants to be free, but does not have the heart to abandon him. This conflict is the thread that makes the film work.

Unlike Easy Rider or even Five Easy Pieces, Rain People is not a bohemian journey. These people are running scared, not looking to find themselves. The road is not a charactor as in many of this period's films. Rain People has little to do with what was happening in 1969. It just happened to be made that year.

Francis Ford Coppola filmed Rain People with a small scope: lots of close ups, lots of long scenes in the car, and dialouge which has the intimacy of real conversation. The flims late 60s, up close cinamatic style almost gives the feel of watching a documentry, and one that puts you in the car with these two decent but sad drifters.

Excellent work