Rachel and the Stranger

Big Davey has lost his wife and lives with his son on the frontier. He needs somebody to look after the boy and buys Rachel, a woman serving out an indenture, and marries her. He treats her not as a wife but as a hired hand. Then his old friend Jim comes by the farm. Jim sings, is kind to Rachel, and for the first time Davey notices what he has. William Holden plays the farmer, Robert Mitchum the stranger and Loretta Young plays Rachel. Norman Foster directed. The mould is not really the western; there are very few guns, few events, and the film consists almost entirely of the tension three people build inside one cabin. The story does not present Rachel as a prize either; her own decision settles the ending. Ninety-three minutes. Mitchum sings the songs himself.