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Raggedy Man (1981) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082969/

FULL SCREEN PRESENTATION

Raggedy Man is a 1981 film starring Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek. It was filmed in Lockhart, Texas. The story is about people in the small Texas town of Gregory during World War II.

Sissy Spacek plays a divorced mother of two who tries to go it alone in mid-1940s Texas. Shunned by the respectable townsfolk because of her marital breakup, Spacek must endure the unwanted attentions of every low-life man in the community. Enter Eric Roberts, a young sailor who becomes both friend and protector to Spacek and her sons. Once Roberts is called to active duty, however, Spacek is supposedly left at the mercy of the menacing raggedy man-a scuzzy ragpicker, played by Sam Shepard, whose intentions arent what they seem.

  Sissy Spacek  ...  Nita Longley  
  Eric Roberts  ...  Teddy  
  Sam Shepard  ...  Bailey  
  William Sanderson  ...  Calvin  
  Tracey Walter  ...  Arnold  
  R.G. Armstrong  ...  Rigby  
  Henry Thomas  ...  Harry  
  Carey Hollis Jr.  ...  Henry  
  Ed Geldart  ...  Mr. Calloway  
  Bill Thurman  ...  Sheriff  
  Suzi McLaughlin  ...  Jean Lester  
  Lupe Juárez  ...  Crecencio the Barkeeper  
  Jessie Lee Fulton  ...  Miss Pud  
  LuBelle Camp  ...  Miss Beulah  
  James N. Harrell  ...  Ticket Taker  



RAGGEDY MAN is something like a country-and-western ballad that relates a supposedly sad, melodramatic story but whose simple, repetitive, upbeat rhythms effectively deny the awfulness of the events being sung about. 

The time is 1944 and the setting is the tiny community of Gregory, Tex., where Nita Longley (Sissy Spacek), abandoned by her husband four years earlier, has a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job as the local telephone operator. Nita, who lives with her two young sons in the two-room shack that is the Gregory telephone company, is a nononsense, resilient young woman who loves her children, minds her own business and, in her few off hours, studies to become a secretary, even though her boss has convinced her that because of the war she is frozen in her job. 

Even if she werent tied to her switchboard, Nita would still find Gregory a gloomy place to be. It looks to be a virtually uninhabited place with one grocery store, one saloon, a filling station, a oncea-day bus stop, two roughnecks and one eccentric called the raggedy man, who does odd jobs around the hamlet. 

Nitas placid, not entirely unpleasant existence is suddenly upset when one stormy summer night a young sailor named Teddy (Eric Roberts) knocks on her door and asks to make a long-distance call to his fiancee, who, he learns unhappily, has married another. 

One thing leads to another, and Teddy stays on in Gregory for the duration of his pass, becoming Nitas lover and a surrogate father to her two boys, all of which is duly noted by Nitas neighbors, for whom divorced means experienced, which is just another way of saying loose. 

The violent melodrama that erupts shortly after Teddy returns to his base, and that is resolved by the timely appearance of a stranger, has been so primitively prepared for in the script that the effect is less alarming than disarming, as in a folktale. Its the end of a stanza in a ballad that can be predicted because of the ballads rhyme scheme. 

That Raggedy Man, a movie of sweet, low-keyed charm, should look as good and as authentic as it does is probably not surprising because Jack Fisk, whose first directorial assignment this is, was formerly a production designer whose credits include Badlands, Movie Movie and Days of Heaven. Mr. Fisk, in private life the husband of Miss Spacek, makes no effort to smooth out the lumps in William D. Wittliffs original screenplay, which has at its center an unexplored nonmystery, the solving of which is a surprise only to the characters in the movie. 

The director concentrates instead on the characters and the locale, and the very real emotions experienced by Nita and Teddy and her children during the brief, idyllic interlude when they seem to form a family. 

Miss Spacek is a lovely actress of unexpected grit and humor, and this is her movie from start to finish. Mr. Roberts is also extremely good as the sailor who wanders out of her life as casually as he has entered it. Sam Shepard, as fine an actor as he i s a playwright, has an opportunity to be little more than a passing presence as Nitas wayward husband. 

The supporting roles are nicely handled by R.G. Armstrong as Nitas grumpy boss from the telephone company and by William Sanderson and Tracey Walter, who play what seem to be Gregorys two and only lowlifes. 

Ít has some of the considerable appeal of something heard late at night, after a number of beers, on a jukebox, in a roadhouse far from anywhere. 

Raggedy Man, which has been rated PG (Parental Guidance Suggested), ends with an eruption of violence that, though not very convincingly staged, might upset very small children. Vincent Canby