This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Stanley Fried’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
I watched this because of the score by Aaron Copland. Turns out it has a great cast including: Carroll Baker, Ralph Meeker, Mildred Dunnock, Jean Stapleton, and Doris Roberts. The storyline is quite bold for 1961. The dialogue is just shy of being natural. The performances could have used better directorial control. And the story is plain weird: College student is raped on her way home from school one night. She doesn't tell anyone, leaves her parent's home and her bitch of a mother without telling them she's going, takes a room in a dive, gets a job a Woolworth's, tries to jump off a bridge but is saved by a man who keeps her locked up for days against her will and tries to push himself on her. He finally allows and opening for her to leave which she does only to find a sense of freedom and well-being so she returns to the man who had imprisoned her to have a happy life. There is a level of implausibility to what is taking place in a very short period of time.
This isn't Copland's best film score. I would watch this again though because of the cinematography and the gritty images of New York City in the very early 1960s. I'd also watch it again for the performances of a stellar cast working with this odd material. The sequences which follow the rape are a very sensitive tracking of the character through her actions. Carroll Baker is brilliant in her control of these scenes which are nearly silent.