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With: James Caan, Shirley Knight, Robert Duvall, Marya Zimmet, Tom Aldredge, Laurie Crews, Andrew Duncan, Margaret Fairchild, Sally Gracie, Alan Manson, Robert Modica
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Written by: Francis Ford Coppola
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Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
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MPAA Rating: R
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Running Time: 101
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Date: 08/27/1969
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Crying Themselves Away
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
In one of his earliest works, and during a time in which cinema was almost exclusively a boys' club, Francis Ford Coppola crafted an uncommonly intelligent and sympathetic role for a woman, perhaps inspiring Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese to do the same with Breezy and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, respectively. Natalie (Shirley Knight) gets out of bed early one morning, leaving her husband asleep, gets in the family station wagon, and drives away. We learn that she is pregnant and needs some time away from him. He — and her parents — respond with rage, but this is what she needs. She picks up an athletic type, Jimmy Kilgannon, nicknamed "Killer" (James Caan). She's thinking of having a meaningless roll in the hay, until she discovers that Killer has sustained a head injury playing football and was paid to leave his college. (He's essentially a child that needs to be cared for, which is just what Natalie left in the first place.) It's a tender, tragic story, told with patience and empathy. Robert Duvall plays a motorcycle cop who turns out to be a psychopath.
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