This almost poetic movie owes almost everything to Alida Valli. If her relatively thick Italian accent in her French is there because ... or just couldn't be avoided; I don't know.
She's attractive, emotionally, stable. Very much to be adored. Until that clochard (that's what they called him in the French original) happened to pass by. She thinks it is her husband, who had lost his memories. Probably. In real life a women is able to identify, from scars, marks, hands if it is the person. In this movie, she tries with other ways. Like having people tell ridiculously loud and artificially stories that the man ought to know, familiar names. Playing music that they knew about - in case it is him.
This produces a somewhat surreal sphere at times, like when she watches him for his morning routine.
It does get really captivating when she invites him to her place, including dancing together. This is done quite remarkable from the angle of cinematography as well as acting.
The less convincing part is to be seen on the side of Colpi. He might have lacked courage or talent to scratch Duras' topic down to the ground of the story. Hoovering somewhere between Carné's poetic cinema and Bunuel's surrealism, he doesn't show to have a clear grasp on where he actually wanted to go with the story, and Valli.
Actually, I would have loved to see that same story being directed by Bunuel. He would have stirred up quite a larger number of lights to shine over the plot. Or Carné, to make it more poetic, more of a fairy tale.
In the end, what I liked, and why this IS a spoiler review, the clochard disappears without the hero or the audience knowing if it actually was her husband.
And here, it is my personal guess, that he wasn't and isn't. Despite of her strong realism in everything else, I can't get off the feeling that she imagined things. She was very much longing for her husband to return, after so many years. So that - in the end - she took a number of similarities to build her small dream world within all that realism. The end of the story, with her thinking 'have to wait. Winter, summer, have to wait' to me is that clear indication that she is waiting for her husband. And that she would accept anyone that fits into her imagination, her dreams about her long lost love.
She's attractive, emotionally, stable. Very much to be adored. Until that clochard (that's what they called him in the French original) happened to pass by. She thinks it is her husband, who had lost his memories. Probably. In real life a women is able to identify, from scars, marks, hands if it is the person. In this movie, she tries with other ways. Like having people tell ridiculously loud and artificially stories that the man ought to know, familiar names. Playing music that they knew about - in case it is him.
This produces a somewhat surreal sphere at times, like when she watches him for his morning routine.
It does get really captivating when she invites him to her place, including dancing together. This is done quite remarkable from the angle of cinematography as well as acting.
The less convincing part is to be seen on the side of Colpi. He might have lacked courage or talent to scratch Duras' topic down to the ground of the story. Hoovering somewhere between Carné's poetic cinema and Bunuel's surrealism, he doesn't show to have a clear grasp on where he actually wanted to go with the story, and Valli.
Actually, I would have loved to see that same story being directed by Bunuel. He would have stirred up quite a larger number of lights to shine over the plot. Or Carné, to make it more poetic, more of a fairy tale.
In the end, what I liked, and why this IS a spoiler review, the clochard disappears without the hero or the audience knowing if it actually was her husband.
And here, it is my personal guess, that he wasn't and isn't. Despite of her strong realism in everything else, I can't get off the feeling that she imagined things. She was very much longing for her husband to return, after so many years. So that - in the end - she took a number of similarities to build her small dream world within all that realism. The end of the story, with her thinking 'have to wait. Winter, summer, have to wait' to me is that clear indication that she is waiting for her husband. And that she would accept anyone that fits into her imagination, her dreams about her long lost love.