This small town melodrama was Sissy Spacek’s first film after winning the Best Actress Oscar for the musical biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Grade: B-: **1/2* (*****)
It was directed by Spacek’s husband, Jack Fiske, in his screen directorial debut. Fisk would become one of Hollywood’s most accomplished production designer over the next four decades, collaborating with David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, among others.
Spacek is well cas as Nita Longley, the young divorcee of Raggedy Man, is a switchboard operator who lives in the office with her two young sons.
Upwardly mobile, she practices typing, aspiring for a better job. She pleads with the company’s manager for a job transfer, reminding him “this was supposed to be a stepping stone.” “There is War going on,” he keeps saying, which means she is “frozen.”
There is no separation between work and leisure; people awake her up at all times of the day and night. For better or for worse, Nita is the communication center in town. But one day, Teddy Roebuck (Eric Roberts), a sensitive sailor, stops by, and a tender romance ensues.
The kids immediately relate to him as their surrogate father. But the town’s residents are of the malevolent and gossipy types. A gossipy customer stops by to pay his telephone bill; the next day, the whole town knows about Nita’s affair.
Worse yet, the Triplett brothers, who have put an eye on Nita, harass her two boys.
Like Something Wild, Raggedy Man is an incoherent text, mixing elements from other films without integrating them into a coherent story.
Specifically, it borrows from To Kill a Mockingbird the strange character of Boo, here in a man named Bailey (Sam Shepard), Nita’s ex-husband who is supposed to have joined the Army, but is actually in town watching over his family from a distance.
The film aso recalls Halloween and Wait Until Dark in its notion of a single, sexually harassed woman, helplessly trapped in her own home.
Attempting to reconstruct life in a small-town (Gregory, Texas) in the 1940s, the films lacks a consistent point of view, combining nostalgia with cynicism.
The misconceived ending is also unsatisfactory: Nita leaves town for San Antonio; on the bus her kids talk about Teddy (a hint that they may reunite).
The film is also known for marking the debut of Henry Thomas, who would next star in his breakout role as Elliott Taylor in Spieberg’s sci-fi blockbuster, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Released by Universal, Raggedy Man did not find its appreciative audience amnd was declared a commercial flop.
Credits:
Directed by Jack Fisk
Written by William D. Wittliff, based on Raggedy Man, 1979 novel by William D. Wittliff, Sara Clark
Produced by Terry Nelson, Burt Weissbourd, William D. Wittliff
Cinematography Ralf D. Bode
Edited by Edward Warschilka
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date; Sept 18, 1981
Running time: 94 minutes
Budget: $9 million
Box office: $2 million
