A Rage to Live (1965)A fabulous movie, well written, beautifully filmed and acted, intense and fast and beautiful, a real dramatic drama. And Suzanne Pleshette as the star is an astonishment, subtle and sharp and exactly what her part demands as the rich and sexually charged girl in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. Her two main men, played by Ben Gazzara and Bradford Dillman, are right on as well, and throw in Peter Graves as a third man in her life, and you get the range of characters and a sense of the plot. Yes, she's pulled by a handsome guy whether it's her husband or not.And yet she never comes off to me as the "tramp" that some call her. She's warm and generous and seems to just be living her life as a nice person, even regretting her slipping off the straight and narrow now and then. The town's reaction is startling and believable. A really fabulous situation, a soap opera of sorts, but given a wonderful sense of form and pace and eventually high drama. Director Walter Grauman is not a household name of course, and he directed mainly television, but he makes this a very slick and powerful production. The second half, especially, where Gazzara and Pleshette have a lot of screen time together, develops emotionally. Yes, the turns and conflicts are not total surprises, but they're well placed. Gazzara might be familiar to some for his role in "Anatomy of a Murder" across from Jimmy Stewart. Pleshette had a career with few great movies, but she did appear (second to Tippy Hedron) in "The Birds."A vastly underrated movie, coming just a year or so before the big shift in styles and "New Hollywood." It's widescreen black and white, quite a treat to watch on every level. I guarantee it'll rise in value over the next decade.

This story starts off with a young girl named Grace Caldwell Tate, (Suzanne Pleshette) who is attacked and forcefully raped and does not report the matter but assumes this is a normal procedure between a girl and boy. Grace begins to have other encounters with men and causes all kinds of problems in her home and mostly her mother and brother. Jack Hollister, (Peter Graves) married Grace and they have a little boy and Grace continues to have an affair with Roger Bannon, (Ben Gazzara) and this film continues to go on with Grace never able to say a simple word like "NO", and leave "Me Alone". This is a mental sickness that can be corrected, but the person involved suffers horrible consequences. Great acting by Suzanne Pleshette and the entire cast. This is a very sad story and these type of people need help.

Suzanne Pleshette, who recently died, gave a truly memorable performance in this 1965 film. To say that promiscuity is her problem is to put it mildly.From high school to her married years, she as an attraction for other men that will ultimately lead to her downfall as well as others.Her mother can't take it so she proceeds to drop dead during a vacation with her daughter. Her new former lover, Ben Gazzara, can't take being thrown over. In a drunken rage, he beats up a woman he meets at a hotel only to be killed in a wild chase scene with police.It appears that Pleshette finally finds happiness with husband Bradford Dillman. They have a beautiful son before she takes up with Gazzara.Peter Graves is also effective as an earlier lover with an insanely jealous wife. Though Graves never carried on with Pleshette while she was married, the wife can't be convinced of this.The fault with this film lies at the end. We are left up in the air once Dillman is led to believe that she has carried on with Graves. His running out in a rage is not reconciled. Can Pleshette try to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and try to get him back?

Movie adaptations from John O'Hara never really get it right. Either they're not frank enough or they sentimentalize or they just plain don't have the budget to put his world on screen. He's very specific about the historical moment when his stories take place. "A Rage to Live" (like "From the Terrace" and "Butterfield 8" as well) is transposed to a later time. It really might have helped if it could have shown us the changing manners and mores of a very specific Pennsylvania world. What I mainly remember it for is one of the two flat-out sexiest performances by a male in the movies that I can readily recall. The other one is Ray Danton in "Too Much, Too Soon." Gazzara is hotter than blazes in his part. A few years ago, when the actor Harry Reems was extradited to Tennessee for appearing in a porn film shot elsewhere that just happened to be sold there, Gazzara was one of his most vocal defenders. He was no kid, Gazzara, but he said "I work out every day. My body is in WONDERFUL shape. And if I want to do a porn film, I want the right to do one." Any surprise that he was so sexy in this film, or in "The Strange One"?