Kaelan Mccaffrey
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
blanche-2
Suzanne Pleshette has "A Rage to Live" in this 1965 potboiler also starring Bradford Dillman, Ben Gazzara, Linden Chiles, Carmen Matthews, Bethel Leslie and Peter Graves. The film is an adaptation of a John O'Hara novel, and I understand from people who have read the book that it's not a very good one.Pleshette plays Grace Caldwell, a young woman who feels validated and loved only when she's having sex. After an incident with a boy in her home town, Grace's mother (Matthews) suffers a heart attack. The two take a vacation, where Grace takes up with a waiter. While she's with him one night, her mother has a fatal heart attack and dies. Eventually Grace meets Sidney Caldwell (Dillman). They fall in love, and Grace confesses her misdeeds to him; he wants to marry her. They have a son, and for three years, all is well. Then construction worker Roger Bannon arrives to work on the Caldwell property and admits to Grace that he's always wanted her. The two have an affair, which Grace ends, only to have Roger beat up a hooker and call her Grace and talk about what a slut she is before he's killed in a car accident. Sidney finds out and wants to end the marriage; she talks him into giving her one more chance. Then she's publicly accused of having an affair with an old friend (Graves) by his wife (Leslie), which isn't true.The end of this film is not very satisfying. We are led to believe that Grace is finished. She probably is - after that public humiliation, it's doubtful Sidney will want to continue the marriage. However, certainly he is assured by the Graves character that nothing went on between him and Grace. So in the end, Grace is doomed because of something she didn't do.Suzanne Pleshette hit Hollywood about ten years too late - she would have had a chance to become a major star before the studios dissolved. She was beautiful with a gorgeous figure, a sexy voice and one other attribute - she was a wonderful, honest actress. Her big career would be in television, and it was a good one, but nothing like she could have had. Here she rises above some overblown material to give a strong, sympathetic performance. The rest of the cast is good. Bethel Leslie as the alcoholic Amy Hollister has some good scenes as Peter Graves' insecure and unreasonable wife. Ben Gazzara does a fine job with an off-the-wall, obsessive character.In the book, Sidney dies before he can divorce Grace, and Grace moves away. I suppose having her cry in the middle of the road was more effective. "A Rage to Live" is good to see for Pleshette and for the way an explicit subject matter was handled in the '50s. With a lesser actress in the lead, it might have seemed very campy.
crittahg
I thought that "A Rage To Live" was a fine -yet tragic- portrayal of a nymphomaniac (Suzanne Pleshette) struggling to find personal identity outside of the bedroom, auto backseat, etc. Also, the meaning & outer realms of "love" and how it factors into a one-sided, non-monogamous marriage. Ben Gazzara's character is very dark; a hard-working Irishman who desires material wealth as well as the flesh. There are several story lines that branch from Pleshette's infidelities, one of which brings a psychologically tragic aspect to the film. A feminist approach to this film might suggest that all of the other women in the film were overly (yet appropriately for the times) supportive of their husbands alone, living or deceased. Pleshette's character felt the need to find her true self with the help of emotional love, given to her for the first time by her husband. She constantly admits to having a "problem that she is embarrassed about", however she seeks no real counsel or help. Pleshette almost appears too aware of her faults yet acts baffled when she is caught. Her character is too assuming of others' forgiveness, using the age-old "I said I was sorry" routine almost every time. The "encounters" are subtle and portrayed very tactfully as well, I suppose because it was still the 1960's; I would hate for this film to be remade because I'm sure that some of the scenes would have overblown sexual situations.
oliverpenn
"A Rage to Live" had beautiful, haunting theme music which crept in at just the right moments. The story of Grace Caldwell, a beautiful young girl with a "problem," not unlike most men, everywhere, she loved sex and had no control over her actions. She was a nympho.Women like Grace are scorned and hated by other women, because men are so drawn to her type -- women who crave sex just like men. There wasn't a lot of "dating and cat and mouse" with a girl like Grace. A brief look into her eyes and the next stop was the bedroom.Personally, I felt sorry for Grace after her marriage to Bradford Dillman and the birth of her child. She seemed truly happy. Into her life walks Ben Gazzara, with a bulging crotch and sexy Italian bravado. Much too much for Grace to resist, especially when he tells her that he has the hots for her. Obviously, Grace is not getting the KIND of sex she craves: cheap, tawdry, motel sex with strange men. Well, that's what she got with Ben, but he was mentally "off" and easily fell in love with Caldwell. Trying to break off the affair with Gazarra, she tells him, "You knew what this was. I have a husband and child that I love." His response, of course, is to call her a "dirty slut" and a "rotten, filthy whore!"Ben is not the only man that is after Grace. Every man she comes across "knows" her and "her kind." Unfortunately, it's difficult for her to say "no." Even on a vacation with her mother, who has a bad heart, Grace sneaks out in the middle of the night to have tawdry sex with a hotel worker. She copulates with a college buddy of her brother's, plus, it was insinuated that she had "entertained" other men.The ending is sad, especially because her husband deserts her after a drunken, jealous wife accuses Grace of "sleeping" with her husband (Peter Graves.) After calling Grace a "tramp," the woman breaks down in tears and tells Bradford that her husband "admitted it!!!"Susanne Pleshette was wonderful. Her performance was as good as any other actress's in 1965, certainly better than Liz Taylor's in 1960's "Butterfield 8." Perhaps if Grace had been a prostitute, the role would have been more appealing to the Academy. They just LOVE giving Oscars to actresses who play ladies of the evening. Nymphomania, obviously, is too strong for their coffee.Too bad Susanne didn't become a major movie star -- she certainly had the looks and the talent.I'd love to have this on DVD. And, that THEME music was lovely.
David (Handlinghandel)
This thing is dreadful.. It treats "nymphomania" as if it were transmissible. I hope no teenaged girls saw, and were terrified by, this thing when it came out. It could have had lasting ill effects on their psyches. It probably got a far wider release than "The Naked Kiss," which came out at around the same time, is about a woman with "a reputation," and is infinitely superior.
