I Watch Films: A Rage To Live
Grace Caldwell is sexually assaulted at home by her brother’s friend Charlie Jay. She gives in and discovers she likes having sex. This is before the invention of free love so her family (mother and brother, her father a Pennsylvania newspaper baron has died) put a stop to it. After her mother has a breakdown she and Grace go to Florida for the climate and to rest; while Grace has sneaked out to have sex her mother collapses and dies.
She is proposed to by Sydney Tate, a real estate broker. She confesses her sexual history, promises to stay on the straight and narrow and does so for several years, living on the family farm she has inherited, bringing up their son and becoming part of the community, leading the committee that runs the charity fair that takes place on the farm.
They get a good deal doing farm repairs from Roger Bannon, a contractor whose mother was Grace’s mother’s housekeeper. Grace falls for him, having an affair. Meanwhile she flirts with the newspaper editor Jack Hollister, making his alcoholic wife – her old friend Amy – suspicious and jealous. After Grace breaks up with Roger truth and lies come out.
This is based on a John O’Hara novel of the same name, a sprawling multi-decade chronicle of medium-sized town life, from top to bottom as several characters grow up, marry and become part of society. This film strips a lot of that back to Grace’s story, and mostly to her wanting to have sex despite it being socially unacceptable (and dangerous). A forgettable, good-looking melodrama.
Watch This: Glitzy period drama with period opinions spoken
more forthrightly than usual
Don’t Watch This: Begins with violence and sexual assault,
ends with confusion, lies and despair
Comments