Taglines: Her hang-ups weren’t much… Just a husband and a baby on the way.
The Rain People movie storyline. Long Island housewife Natalie Ravenna has just learned that she is pregnant. Natalie doesn’t know if she is well equipped to be a mother let alone a wife. Feeling trapped in her circumstances, she decides to run away to California to get as far away from her life as possible, although she, in a series of telephone calls back to her husband Vinny, is up front about what she believes she is feeling. This escape could be temporary, maybe permanent, she doesn’t really know.
On her drive, she picks a young, handsome hitchhiker who she learns is Jimmy “Killer” Kilgannon, the nickname gained as a former star college football player. Her sole purpose in picking him up is to have a one-night stand, so that she can emotionally escape further from her life with Vinny. When she tries to drop him off at the home of one of his former girlfriends named Ellen Brook, Natalie further learns that Killer’s simple ways are because he is mentally disabled from a head injury sustained in a football game.
The college paid him off to leave, Ellen has no interest in him in his mental state, and he has no family. Natalie herself becomes conflicted about helping him when she feels she can barely help herself. Among the many encounters Natalie has that affects her feelings about her life and about Killer, one with a Nebraska highway patrolman named Gordon provides her with the clearest picture, although it may come at a price.
The Rain People is a 1969 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall. Coppola’s friend and fellow director George Lucas worked as an aide on this film, and made a short documentary titled Filmmaker about the making of the film. The film also won the Golden Shell at the 1969 San Sebastian Film Festival.
The Rain People (1969)
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Shirley Knight, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Marya Zimmet, Tom Aldredge, Laura Crews, Andrew Duncan, Margaret Fairchild, Sally Gracie, Alan Manson, Robert Modica
Screenplay by: Francis Ford Coppola
Cinematography by: Bill Butler
Film Editing by: Blackie Malkin
Art Direction by: Leon Ericksen
Music by: Ronald Stein
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures -Seven Arts
Release Date: August 27, 1969
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