Cheap Raggedy Man (Video) (Jack Fisk) Price

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Customer Reviews of Raggedy Man

Great until the end
Another teriffic performance from Sissy. The perfect role for her. As with several other of her movies, she has such a nice, warm relationship with children (The River, Coal Miner's Daughter. The inner strength she shows in dealing with her situation, the way she holds her own with her boss and the townspeople, is remarkable. Very nice little nude scene too! Only the ending was a disappointment, going from a truly heart warming story to a "Halloween" ending was all wrong. Still, very much worth seeing.

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Raggedy Man: Starts Strong Finishes Weak
Sissy Spacek has made a career of playing the rural disadvantaged woman in so many films that to watch her places the viewer in a comfortable cinematic chair from which to watch her battle entrenched odds. In RAGGEDY MAN, Sissy is Nita, a World War II wife whose husband has mysteriously left her and her two young boys to an uncertain economic fate. Nita is a telephone operator who plugs into war news on a daily basis and thus incorporates the frequent death notices of local soldiers into her already fractured life. She is pretty,lonely, overworked, and underpaid. And to a pair of rednecked brothers, she is clearly undersexed as well. Nita wants nothing to do with them or with any man either until a handsome sailor Teddy (Eric Roberts) strolls into her life and sparks fly long enough for the town gossips' tongues to wag. Teddy is welcomed into Nita's life as a reminder that passion is not extinguished within her. Her two boys bond immediately to Teddy. Overseeing all this is the mysterious scarred Raggedy Man, a local oddball who performs chores and seems to stare at Nita and the enfolding drama within her house. The major problemof RAGGEDY MAN is that director Jack Fisk fails to integrate the trio of Nita, Teddy, and the Raggedy Man. If the focus was to be on the strains of life for a single woman in the South of the World War II era, then the movie should have stayed on topic. And for most of the film, it does, and the viewer learns to care for Nita and her boys as they decide how and to what extent Teddy can fit in. Yet this scarred stranger intrudes too often to dilute the viewers' interest. Further, there is no interaction between Teddy and him. The ending tries vainly to justify the Raggedy Man's appearance at convenient times with no one able to recognize him or guess his identity until a surprise ending of violence. By this time, sailor Teddy is long gone and RAGGEDY MAN concludes in an uneasy stasis of diverted audience identification. RAGGEDY MAN had the potential to be a truly captivating exploration of how some people unexpectedly reach out to like minded souls only to find that society can be a destructive wild card factor, but in this case, the attempt to introduce an element of mystery was incompatible with stark human drama.

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A Slice of Life
This quiet and gentle film is proof that sometimes less is more. Sissy Spacek is terrific as a young mother of two boys struggling to survive in rural Texas during WWII. Director Jack Fisk takes a slow and life like approach that showcases Spacek at her very best. Add to this film a restrained score by Jerry Goldsmith that perfectly frames life in a small rural town during the 40's and you have a very special film.

The film opens in Edna, Texas in 1940 where Nita (Spacek), her newborn baby boy in her arms, sees husband Sam Shepard having a good time in a bar, with someone else. Four years later she is divorced and scratching out a living as a telephone switchboard operator in Gregory, Texas where her job has apparently been frozen. Henry Thomas and Carey Thomas Jr. are both amazingly good as her two boys. Both Nita and her boys are lonely, but Nita is not lonely enough to give in to the small minded Triplett brothers, excellently played by William Sanderson and Tracey Walker.

Her life changes when a sailor passing through this backwoods town takes a real liking to her boys and her, and Nita begins to have feelings for him as well. Eric Roberts gives an affecting performance as Teddy, who loves Spacek and takes her boys to see their first John Wayne picture show. But there is a mean spirited atmosphere of jealousy in the town and someone besides the Triplett brothers has been keeping watch over these proceedings; a mysterious disfigured hobo known throughout the town as the Raggedy Man.

When Teddy finally has to leave there are some truly moving scenes between he and Nita, and he and the boys. He says he will look her up when and if he returns and since director Fisk has taken the time to show a real love develop, we know he will. But upon his leaving she finally finds out the truth about her work status and makes plans to leave for San Antonio. The Triplett brother's lust will manifest itself in violence before she leaves. But there may be a flaw in their attempt, as they have forgotten about, the Raggedy Man.

This is a small wonderful film with a performance by Spacek that is one of her best. It is quiet and gentle, but not soon forgotten. This is a very little known and neglegted treasure you really have to own.