The love triangle between widower, David Harvey (William Holden), his indentured servant, Rachel (Loretta Young), and David’s friend, Jim (Robert Mitchum), would cause Rachel and the Stranger to easily fit into the category “romance.” However, as John DiLeo suggests in Screen Savers, the movie’s integration of many genres makes it a cornucopia of styles, [...]

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One of the many lovely things about RKO’s Rachel and the Stranger is its confident refusal to pin itself to one particular genre. It’s a comedy, no doubt, yet it’s more of a smile-inducer than a laugh riot. Though it’s set in the backwoods of the early nineteenth century, it’s some kind of western, since [...]

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