User reviews

A Walk In The Spring Rain has Fritz Weaver and Ingrid Bergman as a college professor of political science going on sabbatical in the Great Smokey Mountains of Eastern Tennessee. Him for peace and quiet for a year so he can publish rather than perish, she for a little time away from being a mom, grandmother, and babysitter not necessarily in that order.

They take a cottage and the local handyman is Anthony Quinn doing a Smokey Mountain version of Zorba the Greek. He's married to psalm singing Virginia Gregg and she's no fun. Quinn has a son in Tom Holland who like his dad takes his action where he finds it.

The educated Bergman intrigues Quinn and he gives all kinds of hints as to his availability. But this one is doomed for all kinds of reasons.

I'm all for romantic stories with older protagonists and Quinn and Bergman fit the bill. The stars get good support from the rest of the cast. This is Bergman and Quinn's second film together and they acquit themselves well.

Still it won't be listed among the best for either.

I read about some of the bad reviews here. I don't usually write a review of any film I have watched but this time around I felt like I need to jot down something nice about this movie. It wasn't as bad viewing as I initially thought.

I didn't expect it to be on par with other great love stories in calibre of Casablanca or Brief Encounter. But I think it is a decent film, amicable but has sad ending. The film has a beautiful scenery with the great Appalachians landscape during the spring season that makes my heart long to be in that place. It is good enough to fill my time as I didn't have any thing worthy to do. The film flows beautifully, slow at start but still engaging that keeps you glued to the screen.

The attraction between Libby and Will was a bit rushed and Quinn did not convince me enough as a mountain handyman. Something is missing here. The scene where Libby met with Will's son came out of nowhere. They should focus a bit more on relationship between Will and his son so we can fully understand their interaction or left hanging guessing ouselves. Did he love his son or not?

The great Ingrid Bergman as usual carries the whole movie on her shoulder. Put someone lesser in her part and the film would be unbearable to sit through. I enjoy looking at her matured beauty, she was 54 at the time but still has this luminosity and radiance coming out of her. Its hard to compete with her, when she was on screen everybody ceased to exist.

Libby Meredith (Ingrid Bergman) is the dutiful wife of college professor Roger Meredith. They are traditional and do not approve of their daughter's personal pursuit away from her family obligations. Roger is on sabbatical writing a book. The couple leaves New York City for the country where Libby finds flirtatious neighbor Will Cade (Anthony Quinn).

There is a promise of an epic romance. It has the great pairing of Bergman and Quinn. It should be incredible. Libby as a conservative matriarch is set up to join the sexual revolution. I like the conflict between mother and daughter. I don't buy Anthony Quinn as an American, let alone a southerner. This should be a battle for Libby's heart and mind by the two men. There is a sudden twist that short-circuits the confrontation. In short, I don't like the twist which comes out of nowhere. Otherwise, the two leads and the premise provide interesting viewing.

This is a bittersweet tale of two people from different worlds who fall in love and are unhappily married to others. Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn make this story poignant, well-acted and believable.

It's love at first sight for Quinn as he comes out the box, swinging and pitching in his attraction for her. Honestly, it's just a little unsettling him always popping up, being a corn-pone chatterbox, subtly moving in with the compliments and lingering looks. He comes out the gate heated; but who can blame him. It's Ingrid Bergman he's fancying. And she slowly simmers as her attraction grows for the Tennessee mountain man Quinn plays. She's the wife of a University professor ( Fritz Weaver. ) Nice guy, good provider, but you know the type: he's no ogre, but he's staid, pedantic, and definitely not romantic. As she is throughout her career in films, Bergman is the one to watch. Her characters are so full of life if only allowed to break free.

You know how unfair, biased, skewed and stark movies present choices when they pit Marriage vs the Love Affair. We've seen it time and time again ( "The Arnelo Affair", "There's Always Tomorrow", etc. ) Well this movie is no different. Quinn's wife (played by Virginia Gregg ) is as drab and as sexless as Bergman is glamorous and sensual. It's difficult to conjure up why there was even an attraction between them ( Quinn & Gregg ) in the first place. Fritz Weaver's character fares no better. Apparently he doesn't realize what we all know very well from watching movies; when a spouse says: "let's go away, just the two of us" your marriage is on the rocks. Yet Weaver is clueless. Him throwing up their age as a deterrent to living more spontaneously is also a fly in the liniment.

The movie throws in an unnecessary monkey wrench with the issues of the son and daughter of Quinn's and Bergman's in order to create conflict. I do like how Bergman stands up to her daughter in order to try and get some piece of happiness and joy out of life instead of maternal duty. No, we didn't need the kids in this to get conflict. The story should have stayed focused on how Bergman and Quinn handle their situation.

Admirers of classic films will no doubt enjoy seeing Anthony Quinn reunited with Ingrid Bergman, his co-star from 1964's "The Visit"; they're an interesting screen match, but here, in 1970, with handyman Quinn talking in a southern drawl and matronly Bergman playing a professor's wife living on a farm in Tennessee, one cannot help but feel a sense of central dislocation. Bergman's husband (American actor Fritz Weaver) takes a year off from teaching to write a textbook, but instead stares at his typewriter, pipe firmly stuck between his teeth (his wife isn't frigid, but he is). It's no wonder then that Bergman enjoys Quinn's advances, but since they're both married--and have problems with their selfish children besides--it's hardly a December-age romance. Dreary melodrama, adapted from the book by Rachel Maddux, with clumsy exposition and even clumsier attempts to modernize an old formula. Charles Lang's cinematography is a visually jarring mix of location shots, back projection and ugly sets, while miscast Quinn is overly-friendly and solicitous (he makes the audience as uncomfortable as Ingrid's chilly spouse). While it's good to see the two stars together again, this Smoky Mountains scenario is a drag: colorlessly staged, poorly-conceived, predictable and depressing. ** from ****

It's so frustrating when a movie has the ingredients to click well, but doesn't gel. Ingrid Bergman's character is a "mature" woman and supportive wife, living a conventional life, but her capacity for joy and passion is ignited when accompanying her professor husband to the country for a year while he attempts to write a book. She meets the handyman played by Anthony Quinn and for him it is love at first sight. This whole episode is downright creepy however, with Quinn immediately leering and letching and touching her inappropriately. He's supposed to be a charmingly simple man, determinedly happy, willing to accept whatever Ingrid can give. Instead, he makes your skin crawl and is the type you'd avoid at all costs. So why do I think it could have worked? Ingrid of course is luminous and carries the plot as best she can. With a more attractively drawn potential lover, played with a lighter and more subtle hand, it could have been an intriguing interplay. His eventually showing that he treats her with great respect and proclamation that he will always be there for her could have been very romantic. The ending is bittersweet (really the only logical outcome) and has a real poignancy. But at the end of the day, it's a watch only for die-hard Bergman fans.

A good-looking soap opera buoyed by veteran star power with a rather relentlessly melodious score by Elmer Bernstein and plush photography by Charles Lang; which when not taking in the vibrant Smoky Mountain local colour is concentrating upon the noble features of glamorous grannie, the eternally radiant Ingrid Bergman.

She's stuck with dry, pipe-smoking hubby Fritz Weaver (on sabbatical to write what sounds like a spectacularly dreary academic book), when fate sends her as her handyman sensitive hunk Anthony Quinn, who declares "You're full of love, ain't you Miss Roger?". What follows manages to be both melodramatic yet curiously passionless.

How easy it is for the children to take their parents for granted? The key moment in the film is when the mother character(Ingrid Bergman) asks her daughter, if she has ever thought about her mother as a person. This is in response to her daughter's request that she leave her Smokey Mountains paradise(and new found love), so that she can take care of her grandchild while her daughter can be free to pursue her own law career. At the same time Anthony Quinn- Bergman's lover, is presented with a similar situation with his brutish son, who eyes the blossoming relationship with growing hostility. This is probably the main theme in this wonderfully shot and pleasantly paced drama. By todays standards the ending may be a little sad, but its far more realistic.

Maybe a D. H. Lawrence could convince me that a bored faculty wife as beautiful and intelligent as Ingrid Bergman would fall in love with a loud, somewhat pervy redneck like Anthony Quinn is playing, but as described by producer/writer Stirling Silliphant, from a novel (which I have not read) by Rachel Maddux, I remain in a state of unsuspended disbelief. A big part of my skepticism is due to Silliphant's caricatured presentation of his rural folk which veers from "Deliverance" (the violently sociopathic drunken son of Quinn) to "Petticoat Junction" (Virginia Gregg's "Y'all come back soon now!" wife of Quinn). I mean, I appreciate that Silliphant here is more in the jokey, lively spirit of "Heat Of The Night" than the philosophical bombast of "Route 66" but if there is a middle ground between the lifeless Gatlinberg country club and barnyard sex with a guy who likes to bathe married women while their husbands are watching Silliphant does not appear to have found it. Another big problem for me in the cred dept is Quinn's performance which is best described as "Zorba does The Smokies". I appreciate that director Guy Green wanted to contrast Quinn with the overly intellectual Bergman and her stuffy academic spouse (well played, as always, by Fritz Weaver) but in doing so he forgot to tell this always over the top actor to maybe soft peddle the hand gestures, the moaning and groaning and the hearty laughter and, while he's at it, maybe work on that Southern accent, which is truly execrable. Almost lost in all of this is a fine late Bergman performance which saves the movie from utter crappiness. The scene between her and her selfish yuppie daughter (played by an actress I've never heard of but wish I had named Katherine Crawford) has what the rest of the movie lacks, a sense of well observed truth. Give it a C.

First review above slams the people of the hills of Tennessee, assuming that they are backward, in-bred people. It's too late now, but I would have objected strenuously to that misguided garbage. The reviewer probably never met a real hillbilly, and no, "Deliverance" is not about real people, it's a fictional account invented in Hollywood. Please, you idiots, stop slamming mountain people. You don't even know any.

The problem I see with the movie is casting Anthony Quinn as a mountain man. I never saw any backgrounder that said he was an immigrant from Italy, Greece, or Mexico who moved to the mountains. With the character name they gave him, I assume they were seriously trying to palm Anthony off as a Tennessean. I did notice that they never actually showed his lips moving when he was delivering his lines: Anthony's accent wasn't identifiable as such, but it certainly wasn't TN mountains. I may well be missing something. But, one thing I'm not missing is the outright prejudice, and even hate, I see for the people of the mountains. Shame!

This is an excellent film which I caught accidentally on a rainy afternoon on cable. A professor and his wife head to the appalachians for his 1-year sabbatical. They rent a house from Will Cade (Anthony Quinn), an overly-friendly, hospitable country bumpkin. Will from the very beginning makes comments about how pretty the professor's wife is, and that's just the beginning. While the absent-minded professor is lost in his own world, concerned about his career and completing his book, Will Cade seems to just have too much time on his hands and spends it making the professor's wife more familiar with the wonders of Appalachia. He brings her flowers from the countryside, buys her animals to keep her company, takes her to see the beautiful scenery. None of these are overt passes, but they all could be interpreted either way, which is part of the genius of the film: on the one hand, Will Cade really is doing a lot of things for this woman and anyone would be touched by them; he is extremely sincere. But on the other, there is something about him which makes you uncomfortable, maybe his over-familiarity with people he doesn't know. In this way, it's similar to Cape Fear since it indirectly says a lot about social class--the professor is overly intellectual, but passionless and emotionally handicapped, unable to think of others besides himself; while the country bumpkin is not wordly, but very genuine and giving. There are two other subplots involved a daughter of the professor and his wife, and the Will Cade's son, with whom he has conflicts which are never fully explained. Eventually, the woman gives in and kisses Cade, and I won't give away the rest of the story. But the mood of the film is very well set. There is a great scene at an appalachian country fair where Will is in rare form and the professor is clearly uncomfortable in this "culture" which he doesn't consider a "culture". The whole story is set in this haunting, appalachian environment, which is how it is similar to "Deliverance". There is that fantasy which urban dwellers have of the simple, personal country life, and then there's the in-breeding, backwardness, and so-on they are repulsed by. I highly recommend this film.

Terrible! This middle-aged romance served as a late vehicle for Ingrid Bergman as a professor's wife who embarks on a disasterous affair with a Tennessee Mountain Man, (an over-the-top Anthony Quinn in full-throttle Zorba mode). It was based on a novel by Rachel Maddux which Stirling Silliphant thought enough of to produce and do the screenplay but by 1970 love stories were for the Ryan O'Neals and Ali McGraws of this world and not for a couple of over-the-hill old fogies from yesteryear so the film flopped and disappeared. As Bergman's husband, Fritz Weaver isn't at all bad but otherwise "A Walk in the Spring Rain" is a film no-one might want to keep on their C.V's.

After Ingrid Bergman finally won a highly coveted Hot Toasty Rag award for her work in The Visit, she teamed up with Anthony Quinn again and earned another nomination for A Walk in the Spring Rain. They had such wonderful, intense energy together, and in this romance they both had the opportunity to play against type. Ingrid's character was a housewife who'd spent her life giving all of herself to other people. Tony played someone quiet, tender, and sweet.

Ingrid's husband, Fritz Weaver, is a professor, and for his sabbatical, they've decided to rent a cabin in the country so he can have the peace and quiet to write a book. Fritz is intelligent, opinionated, highbrow, and rather cold. Ingrid comes to life in her new country surroundings, and as she learns to love gardening, walking in nature, and caring for animals, she also develops a friendship with the cottage caretaker: Anthony Quinn. Tony is simple, earthy, and although he has passion, he isn't demonstrative. Both he and Ingrid are married, but they can't deny the deep feelings that continue to grow.

I know you're already out searching for a copy of A Walk in the Spring Rain, but there's a warning that comes with my recommendation. This is a drama. Yes, you'll see Ingrid looking cuter than she's ever looked, frolicking with baby deer and sheep, and Tony picks flowers for her; but something happens in this movie that's very upsetting. I won't tell you what it is or when it happens, but there is a "too good to be true" aura that surrounds the story. And when something seems too perfect. . . Well, just don't go into this movie thinking it's another Indiscreet. I loved the movie, and as a member of the Hot Toasty Rag board, I cast my vote for Ingrid, but I'm not sure I'd be able to sit through it again.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to adult content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

Anthony Quinn as the ignorant Ah-like-mah-wommen-barefoot-and-pregnant Smokey Mountain Man Redneck buck?

Ahhhhhh, no.

Ingrid Bergman as a mousey Professor's wife driven to sexual roll-in-the-barn-hay abandon in nekked craven lust for the Smokey Mountain Man Redneck buck?

Ahhhhhhh, that's another, no.

Sexual chemistry between Bergman and Anthony Quinn qua actors - Zero.

So you've got two actors mis-cast for their roles and whose personal chemistry is so low that all the "hot scenes" have to be staged in the dark and accompanied by strenuous crescendo's of orchestral music to signal passion-in-process.

Add to that concoction. Another gigantic mis-match of a musical score - we ain't talkin' Appalachian Spring, or even blue grass we're talking Hollywood studio "westerns" orchestral gallops = and it just add insult to injury.

And, last but not least, a preposterous overall production quality that looks more like a toney Napa Valley vineyard party venue shot in glaring blaring over-saturated grand hooray for Hollywood Techi-ni-color than a gray, coal begrimed, hard-scrabble Appalachian town - and, well, the whole thing's just a mash - and not the good kind (i.e., white liquor).

And as for the script - well, Bergman seems to think she's doing a reprise of A Doll's House while Quinn is, of course, doing Zorba the faux Greek goes faux Redneck.

Additionally, there are the little touches - like the randy baby goats Bergman cottons to right away - get it?

Oh well, 'nuff said - this thing's not worth watching.

No, I don't get the title either. Apart from during the opening credit sequence, nobody in this film takes a walk in the rain, in spring or any other season. Perhaps the title has some significance in Rachel Maddux's source novel, which I have never read. (Indeed, before seeing the film I had never heard of it or of its author).

Roger Meredith, a middle-aged university professor of law, has been given a sabbatical to finish writing a book. He and his wife Libby move from New York to a small house in a remote part of the Tennessee mountains. It is a cold, snowy winter, which made me wonder why they didn't relocate either in September, at the start of the academic year, or wait until spring. They make the acquaintance of their neighbours, Will and Ann Cade. Will, a native-born countryman, proves very helpful to the Merediths. The Cades' marriage is not a happy one, and Will and Libby begin an affair, of which Roger, wrapped up in his book, remains blithely ignorant. At least, we presume they are having an affair, but there are no love scenes beyond one single kiss, and no direct references to sexual activity.

There are two further developments. Libby and Roger's married daughter, Ellen, arrives in Tennessee and asks them to return to New York. Ellen has been offered a place at Harvard Law School, and wants Libby to help care for her young son. And then Will's wayward, ne'er-do-well son, who has seen his father kissing Libby, confronts her. Will attempts to intervene, leading to a fateful clash between father and son.

The photography of the Tennessee countryside is attractive, and the acting is of a reasonable standard, although both major stars, Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, have made much better films than this one. This was not, however, a film that I enjoyed. It was badly paced, with long stretches where nothing seems to happen. The two developments mentioned in the previous paragraph only happen right at the end of the film.

Moreover, Bergman's Libby was not a character I could sympathise with, even though we were probably supposed to do so. I could never understand what Roger, who came across as a decent individual, had done to make her dissatisfied with him, or why Will was happy to cuckold a man who regarded him as a friend. When Libby refused her daughter's request that she should return to New York, my sympathies were on Ellen's side. Most parents would be delighted if one of their children won a place at so prestigious a school and would do anything in their power to assist them. Libby grumbles that her daughter simply sees her as a "mother" and not as a person in her own right, but the real reason for her refusal is that she does not want to break off her affair with Will. Needless to say, Libby is not honest enough to admit to Ellen that she is cheating on her father. I would also like to have learned more about Will's relationship with his son (whose name we never find out) and why the two had become estranged.

"A Walk in the Spring Rain" was made in 1970, not long after the abolition of the Production Code. It was probably made in response to a liberalisation in the moral climate, which allowed film-makers to make films about adultery without all the moralising which had traditionally surrounded the subject. ("Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" is another such film from around the same period). In the early seventies it probably came across as quite daring. Today, however, it just comes across as a dull, slow-moving romantic drama about two people we find it difficult to like or identify with. 4/10.