Movie Review: The Vast of Night

The Vast of Night **** / *****
Directed by: Andrew Patterson.
Written by: James Montague and Craig W. Sanger.
Starring: Sierra McCormick (Fay Crocker), Jake Horowitz (Everett Sloan), Gail Cronauer (Mabel Blanche), Bruce Davis (Billy - voice), Cheyenne Barton (Bertsie), Mark Banik (Gerald), Gregory Peyton (Benny Wade), Adam Dietrich (Rodkey Oliver), Mallorie Rodak (Susan Oliver), Mollie Milligan (Marjorie Seward), Ingrid Fease (Gretchen Hankins), Brandon Stewart (Sam), Kirk Griffith (Lon Stemmons), Nika Sage McKenna (Daisy Oliver), Brett Brock (Fred Seward), Pam Dougherty (Mrs. McBroom / Winifred / Jane Greer), Lynn Blackburn (Ruth Reynolds), Richard Jackson (Speares), James Mayberry (Renny), Nicolette Doke (Josephine - voice), Grant James (Arlo), Libby Villari (Grace - voice), Gordon Fox (Pruitt), John Gindling (Cavage), Brianna Beasley (Ethel - voice), L.A. Young (Benson). 
 

The Vast of Night is further proof of that old Roger Ebert adage that a movie “isn’t about what it’s about, it’s about how it’s about it”. The story of The Vast of Night is something you’ve seen before – probably countless times if you are a fan of 1950s science fiction, which is where The Vast of Night positions itself. It takes place over the course of a few hours, in small town America in the 1950s. Sierra (Fay Crocker) is a 16-year-old girl with a fascination for new recording technologies, who also works part time as the town’s switchboard operator. Her friend Everett (Jake Horowitz) has a job as a night DJ for the town’s small radio station. One night, where nearly everyone in town is at a high school basketball game, Fay hears something strange coming out of her radio as she listens to Everett’s show. She lets him know, and the pair begin to investigate just what that sound is – with the help of the weird town eccentrics – those people not at the basketball game, but instead listening to Everett’s strange show. Yes, there will be a line about how “there is something in the sky” above town – as all such stories have. This time however, it feels new and fresh – not just a rehash of the pop culture that director Andrew Patterson and screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger clearly love so dearly.

The Vast of Night is a low-budget movie – there’s no money for special effects or anything fancy – but this movie doesn’t need it. Director Patterson uses every trick in the book to make the film suspenseful and feel alive. He favors long shots – he will hold a shot on Sierra for seemingly minutes on end as she talks, and tries to figure out the sounds. There is a dynamic tracking shot that pretty much goes through the entire town – showing us all in a few minutes everything we need to know.

Patterson trusts the audience to come to the story, to become involved in it. He doesn’t give you a lot to establish the characters – at least not in the traditional way – we gradually get to know them, just by following them around. He trusts the chemistry between McCormick and Horowitz – not romantic, but something deeper, more interesting. He withholds close-ups until they will actually mean something.

You can probably tell what is going to happen in The Vast of Night from the get-go. The film lets you know what territory we are in with the black and white TV framing device – as if we’re watching an episode of a Twilight Zone style TV show. You’ll likely be reminded of everything from The X-Files to Close Encounters of the Third King during the runtime. That’s remarkable for a film that the director basically funded himself.

The Vast of Night is proof of just what can be done with no money if you’re willing to be inventive and original. The story is old; the way it is told is completely new. This could have easily been little more than a calling card movie – those films filmmakers make on the cheap to show off some skill, and hope someone notices. But it’s way deeper than that – and more astonishing. It isn’t often you see a first feature from a director, and feel like you’ll be watching this director’s films for decades to come. The Vast of Night however is one of those films.

Movie Review: Matthias & Maxime

Matthias & Maxime *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Xavier Dolan.
Written by: Xavier Dolan.
Starring: Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas (Matthias), Xavier Dolan (Maxime), Anne Dorval (Manon), Harris Dickinson (McAfee), Marilyn Castonguay (Sarah), Pier-Luc Funk (Rivette), Catherine Brunet (Lisa), Antoine Pilon (Brass), Anne-Marie Cadieux (Martine), Alexandre Bourgeois (Julien), Louise Bombardier (Tante Ginette), Camille Felton (Erika), Adib Alkhalidey (Shariff), Connor McMahon (Avocat), Monique Spaziani (Colette), Samuel Gauthier (Frank), Jacques Lavallée (Me Courtemanche), Louis-Julien Durso (Matisse), Micheline Bernard (Francine). 

Xavier Dolan has been around for more than a decade now – and Mathias and Maxime is his 8^th film in that time. Given that, it’s easy to forget than he’s still only 31 years old – an age at which many filmmakers don’t even have one film under their belt, let alone 8 – most of whom played Cannes, in either Un Certain Regard or the Official Lineup, and many of them winning prizes there as well. It probably shouldn’t be overly surprising then that his filmography is as uneven as it is. He had a pretty good streak going with I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Lawrence Anyways and Mommy (I wasn’t much of a fan of Tom at the Farm) – before his last two films – It’s Only the End of the World and The Death and Life of John F. Donovan were widely panned (even still, the former won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, for some reason). Those experiences may have stung Dolan a little, because he’s dialed back his ambition for Mathias and Maxime – making a film that probably would have made more sense for his career trajectory around the I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats stage. It certainly isn’t his best film – and he still leans too heavily on some of the crutches that have held his career back a little – but it feels like a career reset in many ways.

 The plot will remind some of Lynn Shelton’s breakthrough Humpday, as it once again centers on two apparently straight male friends, whose feelings for each other are perhaps not quite so platonic. One a weekend getaway with the “boys”, Matthias (Gabriel D’Almedia Freitas) and Maxime (Xavier Dolan) are convinced to act in a student short for a bratty younger sister – only after they’ve agreed to participate do they find out they have to kiss in the film – something apparently they did once before, drunkenly, at a freshmen party. Dolan, cleverly, cuts to black right before their lips touch – but it’s a kiss that haunts the rest of the narrative anyway.

Before this, it seemed like this friend group was drifting apart. Mathias is a lawyer, with a promotion looming, and thinks it may be time to grow up – and leave behind his friends, who all he seems to have in common with is drunken memories. Maxime is about to move to Australia for two years – get a fresh start, away from his abusive, recovering addict mother (Anne Dorval, of course). His departure sets a clock on this relationship – on whether Mathias and Maxime will explore it, or even acknowledge it.

Dolan does reach into his bag of tricks probably too often here – I’m not sure we needed yet another turbulent mother/son relationship featuring Dorval and Dolan in their roles once again, although he changes it enough to imply that at least his character is over it – and has made the smart decision to get away. There is yet another sing-along to a pop song here as well – it was a cheesy highlight in The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, but that movie needed all the help it could get.

The film excels most when its concentrated on its two title characters – their vastly different lives, and their tenuous connection, which may, or may not, mean more to them. Dolan also excels at portraying the undeniable homoeroticism that lurks under all these bromances – these large groups of male friends who drink and party and wrestle, but, you know, they’re not gay – as they’ll protest a little too loudly. The rest of the friend group is kind of a homogeneous mass however – lacking in any real individual depth, mainly because Dolan isn’t really interested in them – he’s interested in the two characters escaping them.

Dolan casts the two leads well - Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas is excellent as Matthias, the man who knows he’s at the precipice of something, but not quite sure what – too mature for the frat boy crap, but perhaps not mature enough to really go after what he wants. And Dolan himself – cast in one of his own films for the first time since Tom at the Farm – gives probably his best performance on camera. Maxime is quieter, shier, more beaten down by life – but not so beaten down that he has given up. You get the sense that he would like to hide from the world outside – the bright red birthmark on his face making that impossible though.

I don’t think Mathias and Maxime is Dolan’s best film – it doesn’t hit the operatic highs of Mommy, or feel as raw and angry as I Killed My Mother. But it is the work of a filmmaker who has grown, matured – and perhaps learned something in his time. Perhaps it is the beginning of a new, exciting chapter in his career.

Movie Review: The Wretched

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Classic Movie Review: Police (1985)

Police (1985) 

Directed by: Maurice Pialat   

Written by: Catherine Breillat and Sylvie Pialat and Jacques Fieschi and Maurice Pialat.

Starring: Gérard Depardieu (Louis Vincent Mangin), Sophie Marceau (Noria), Richard Anconina (Lambert), Pascale Rocard (Marie Vedret), Sandrine Bonnaire (Lydie), Franck Karoui (René), Jonathan Leïna (Simon), Jacques Mathou (Gauthier), Bernard Fuzellier (Nez Cassé), Bentahar Meaachou (Claude), Yann Dedet (Dédé), Mohamed Ayari (Momo), Abdel Kader Touati (Maxime), Jamil Bouarada (Jean), Bechir Idani (Barman René), Sylvain Maupu (Clément). 

 

The first half of Maurince Pialat’s Police seems to be a gritty police procedural – but a tough cop Mangin (Gerard Depardieu) trying to break a drug ring, and doesn’t care to play by the rules to do it. It opens with Mangin getting a tip from a criminal – who knows his two options are to flip or go to jail. This leads Mangin and his men to the apartment of Simon (Jonathan Leina), who is from Algeria, and his young girlfriend Noria (Sophie Marceau) – who Mangin brings in for questioning. For the first hour of the movie we watch as Mangin and his men do increasingly violent, corrupt things to try and get the results they want. They want a confession, and even if they have no evidence, they’ll push harder and harder and harder to get it. There is nothing against Simon and Noria for example other than the testimony of the guy who flipped – the cops find nothing in their apartment. But that doesn’t mean they’ll let Simon and Noria go. It also doesn’t mean they are innocent either – as the movie makes clear they are not.

 

The film’s main writer was Catherine Breillat – who had already directed a couple of films by this point, but here is writing for Pialat. She is, as always, interested in the sexuality of teenage girls – here, the 19-year-old Noria. For the first hour, this film feels like it is about the thin line between cops and criminals – how similar they are, and can be. Depardieu’s Mangin feels like a villain – a heartless, violent middle aged man who doesn’t care about right or wrong, or the truth – and who will do anything to get a confession. And Noria feels like a doe eyed, fresh faced victim – perhaps her boyfriend dealt some drugs, but now she is being dragged down and punished right alongside him – even with no evidence.

 

Then, a strange thing happens about halfway through the movie. It jumps ahead a few weeks – Noria has been released from jail, but Simon is still inside, even without much in the way of evidence against him. We end up spending less time in the police station – and more time outside of it, with the same people. Mangin becomes a more complicated character – even somewhat sympathetic – a lonely widower, hardly a true believer in his police work either. He doesn’t think twice of hanging out with defense lawyer Lambert (Richard Anconina), who like everyone else in the film is morally bankrupt. Much of the second part of the film is a long night out with Mangin, Lambert, Noria (who hired Lambert) and young prostitute Lydie (Sandrine Bonnaire) – who Lambert likes, and is trying to get Mangin to arrest her pimp to get her away from her. Lambert falls for Noria – and starts to believe it’s love. But it’s more complicated than that for Noria – who may have stolen some money from Simon’s family, and is looking for protection.

 

One can certainly argue that the film’s view is a little misogynistic – as during the course of the movie the violent, abusive cop becomes a more complex, sympathetic character, whereas the doe eyed seeming victim becomes cold and calculating – using men to get what she wants. She essentially becomes a femme fatale – using stupid men for her own purposes. This is, oddly, in line with much of Breillat’s work – and it always rubs me the wrong way.

 

And yet, Police still largely works – even with this. It is mainly because in Pialat’s film, everyone is flawed, everyone is corrupt. The line between good and evil doesn’t exist, as everyone is corrupted in some way, shape or form. Can you really feel bad for Depardieu’s Mangin – given what we see him do, even if Noria leaves him heartbroken? And given everything we see in the film, is Noria really worse – or just responding to the circumstances that she had in front of her? It’s a testament to the performances by Depardieu and Marceau that they end of complicating these characters, who could have seemed like constructs created by a screenwriter to cynically manipulate.

 

In the end, Police is an odd film – it lures you in with the promise of a genre picture – a procedural – only to eventually conclude that the procedure doesn’t matter. It is about the system, not this case, and the people inside – all of whom get used, but none of whom are innocent.  

Classic Movie Review: Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)

Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)

Directed by: Otto Preminger.

Written by: John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer based on the novel by Maryam Modell.

Starring: Keir Dullea (Steven Lake), Carol Lynley (Ann Lake), Laurence Olivier (Superintendent Newhouse), Martita Hunt (Ada Ford), Anna Massey (Elvira Smollett), Clive Revill (Police Sgt. Andrews), Finlay Currie (Doll Maker), Lucie Mannheim (Cook), The Zombies (The Zombies), Noel Coward (Horatio Wilson), Adrienne Corri (Dorothy).

 

They key reason why Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing works so well is that it takes almost the entire runtime before we discover if Carol Lynley’s Ann Lake really did have a daughter named Bunny, or didn’t. We’ve seen a lot of movies in which everyone in a film thinks that the main character – normally a woman – is crazy, imagining things that are not there, but filmmakers seem to think that as audience members, we need to know that they aren’t crazy. They do this so we will feel sympathy for the characters – although often all it does is sap the movie of tension. In Bunny Lake is Missing, it is entirely plausible that there never was a Bunny Lake at all – until Preminger decides to reveal it for sure.

 

The setup for the movie is simple. Ann has just moved to England from America, to move in with her journalist brother, Steven (Keir Dullea). She is an unwed mother to a four-year-girl, Bunny, and she is dropping her off at her school for the first time. But she’s running late, the kids are already in their classes, so she leaves Bunny in the first day room, and talks to the German cook – who assures Ann she will watch little Bunny until the teacher come down in 10 minutes for morning break. When Ann arrives that afternoon to pick Bunny up, she isn’t there. The teachers say they’ve never seen her. The cook is nowhere to be found. There’s a strange lady in the attic, who studies the imaginations of children, and says having imaginary friends is normal. Steven arrives to help look, as does Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier). But Newhouse cannot find any evidence that Bunny ever existed. There are none of her belongings at the new apartment, no witnesses who can vouch for her, other than Ann and Steven. And what kind of woman has a child out of wedlock to begin with?

 

Bunny Lake is Missing walks a very fine line for much of its runtime between a kind of surreal horror movie, and a very black comedy. No one in the movie seems normal – aside from Olivier’s Newhouse - it is an oddly restrained performance by Olivier, no stranger to hamming it up when the situation calls for it. Here, Olivier seems to know that everyone else is going to go off the rails, so he better remains calm. It’s the right call, as everyone else in the film is really strange. Lynley does a terrific job of playing it down the middle – so you can never tell if she’s crazy, or just grief stricken. There is an eerie calm of Dulea for most of the movie that doesn’t sit right. The strange lady in the attic is, well strange, and she has nothing on the doll maker who refers to the dolls he fixes as his patients. And they all pale in comparison to the playwright Noel Coward, who plays the incredibly creepy landlord, speaking of his dulcet voice that has earned him legions of fans on the BBC.

 

The terrific black and white cinematography by Denys N. Coop is effective creepy throughout – making terrific use of shadow. The odd presence of the rock bands the Zombies – seen on TV – just adds to the surreal tone of the movie, where nothing quite sits right. The climax of the movie is an extended riff on madness – like the finale of Psycho, but stretched to an extreme. In retrospect, you wonder if the ending makes sense – if the character who is that mad could really hide it as well as they do for the rest of the movie, and there are a few moments here and there that perhaps telegraph the ending a little too much.

 

But these are nitpicks to a terrific, surreal masterwork by Preminger. He would soon go off the deep end with films like Skidoo, and never regain his form. But in Bunny Lake is Missing, he is at the top of his game, and he delivers one of his strangest – and best – films.

Classic Movie Review: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959) 

Directed by: Otto Preminger.

Written by: Wendell Mayes based on the novel by Robert Traver.

Starring: James Stewart (Paul Biegler), Lee Remick (Laura Manion), Ben Gazzara (Lt. Frederick Manion), Arthur O'Connell (Parnell Emmett McCarthy), Eve Arden (Maida Rutledge), Kathryn Grant (Mary Pilant), George C. Scott (Claude Dancer), Orson Bean (Dr. Matthew Smith), Russ Brown (George Lemon), Murray Hamilton (Alphonse Paquette), Brooks West (Dist. Atty. Mitch Lodwick), Ken Lynch (Det. Sgt. James Durgo), John Qualen (Deputy Sheriff Sulo), Howard McNear (Dr. Dompierre), Alexander Campbell (Dr. W. Gregory Harcourt), Ned Wever (Dr. Raschid), Jimmy Conlin (Clarence Madigan), Royal Beal (Sheriff Battisfore), Joseph Kearns (Lloyd Burke), Don Ross (Duane 'Duke' Miller), Joseph N. Welch (Judge Weaver). 

 

Jimmy Stewart was the Tom Hanks of his day – an actor who spent much of his career being wholesome, and All-American – an everyman. You were always immediately on Stewart’s side when a movie started. Unlike Hanks though, Stewart was more willing to poke at that image a little – used it in service of directors who wanted him to take on darker roles, that the audience only gradually realizes are darker. Hitchcock used Stewart in films like Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) – and in the audience, you are on his side, even though you gradually realize you are on the side of a Peeping Tom or a necrophilia. And you’re on his side in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder as well – where he plays a defense lawyer, defending an Army officer of killing the man his wife said raped and assaulted her. You’re on his side even though Stewart himself makes clear in the first meeting with his client that he is undeniably guilty of murder, and has to plant the idea of insanity in his head in order to have any chance of getting him off. Anatomy of a Murder is one of the greatest of all-courtroom dramas – and its great perhaps lies in the fact that it is not the story of a crusading lawyer on the side of justice and the truth – the type of character you may expect Stewart to play. No, Anatomy of a Murder is about two sides – the prosecution and the defense – who will do whatever it takes to win, truth and justice be damned.

 

Stewart plays Paul Biegler – the former D.A. of the area, who was voted out at the last election, and has entered private practice since – although that basically means he does a lot of fishing. He is contacted by Laura Manion (Lee Remnick) to take on the case of her husband, Frederick (Ben Gazzara). Laura says that one night she went to the local tavern by herself – and accepted a ride home from the owner – who instead of taking her home, took her to a secluded area, raped and beat her – and she only survived because she got away. She went home and Frederick – and an hour later, he walked into the bar and shot the man dead. As Biegler explains to both Manion’s that isn’t good – it isn’t self-defense, as Laura was already safe. He didn’t even storm off in a fit of rage – he waited an hour. To make matters worse, Laura isn’t precisely behaving like a victim. She is a constant flirt – flirting with Paul, and just about every other man around. She doesn’t seem all that upset by what happened – and the doctor who examined her couldn’t say whether she’d been raped or not. Therefore, there are two plausible scenarios – one that she was raped, and Frederick took revenge on the man who hurt his wife, the other being that Laura had a fling with the bartender, and Frederick got made, hit his wife, and killed his lover. Neither is acceptable – unless, of course, Biegler can prove Frederick was temporarily insane when he committed the crime.

 

The film, which runs nearly three hours, takes its time getting to the trial itself. It spends time getting to know the players – Biegler, of course, his aging, alcoholic friend (Arthur O’Connell – who has a kind of redemption arc in the film that I don’t think really fits). It also establishes Laura and Frederick – and the town itself. When the trial does get going, it adds in another great character – hotshot prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) – who never loses, probably at least in part because he doesn’t always play by the rules. Like Biegler, he tries to stretch what he is allowed to do in order to win.

 

The performances in the film are all top-notch. It is anchored by Stewart of course – giving one of his great performances, doing a version of the cornpone “I’m just a small town lawyer” routine – but in a way that lets you know that he knows he is using it cynically. And yet, basically, Paul is a good guy – and he is basically just doing his job. Most of the rest of the key characters – aside from O’Connell – are played by newcomers. Remnick is terrific as the flirty, sexy Laura – who you struggle to get a real handle on. Gazzara is full of that kind of dangerous charm and hairpin temper ready to explode at any moment. Best of all is a young Scott – all swagger and confidence.

 

The film was directed by Otto Preminger in the same kind of cool style he always had. He doesn’t drill anything into your head here – this remains a courtroom drama of course, but it’s not a preachy one. The film never even answers the central question it raises – whether or not Laura was raped. It doesn’t answer it, because in essence, it doesn’t really matter. It matters when the two sides are arguing it – but it’s just there to try and convince a jury, and both sides are able to raise enough doubt, that you’ll never be able to tell for sure. The film, it seems, is arguing that – that trials are not about truth and justice – but about winning and losing, throwing up enough information and misinformation to either prove your point, or making proving it impossible. It’s really kind of amazing that basically 20 minutes into the film, Preminger and company tell you that Frederick is guilty – and then the film runs from another two-and-a-half hours where they basically ignore that central fact. I think that is why Anatomy of a Murder is so beloved by lawyers themselves because it really is about their profession in a more fundamental way – the truth doesn’t matter; it just matters what you can argue.

Classic Movie Review: Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

Directed by: Otto Preminger.

Written by: Arthur Laurents based on the novel by Francoise Sagan.

Starring: Deborah Kerr (Anna Larson), David Niven (Raymond), Jean Seberg (Cecile), Mylene Demongeot (Elsa), Geoffrey Horne (Philippe), Juliette Greco (Self), Walter Chiari (Pablo), Martita Hunt (Philippe’s Mother).

 

Everything is a game in Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse (1958), until of course, it isn’t fun anymore. The film is set in two different time periods – a year a part – with the present scenes shot in a glassy black-and-white, where father/daughter duo Raymond and Cecile (David Niven and Jean Seberg) are seen living an opulent lifestyle in Paris, but are lifeless, bored and miserable. The scenes from last summer are shot in glorious technicolor, on the French Rivera, where the two are at play, and having the hedonistic time of their lives. At some point, we know, we’ll discover what happened to make everything turn so dour.

 

Raymond and Cecile are the strangest of father/daughter pairings, in that both are essentially carefree libertines, and aren’t afraid to show each other that. Raymond is a cad, hopping from one casual affair to another – the latest being with Elsa (Mylene Demongeot), a much younger, vivacious woman who he has moved into their house – and if he supposedly in living in the boathouse, no one really questions it. Cecile is about 18, but appears younger – with her pixie cut, and girlie dresses, but she knows precisely what kind of effect she has on men, and how to weaponize it – Raymond knows as well, and doesn’t much care. They’re both having too much fun.

 

It is the arrival of Anna (Deborah Kerr) who changes all of that. She was apparently a friend of Cecile’s mother, and is a serious woman – incapable of being casual. Raymond knows this, but pursues her anyway, and soon the couple is engaged. Raymond believes that soon, he, along with Anna, can slowly drift into his old ways – Cecile knows better. And so, Cecile sets about finding a way to ensure that the marriage doesn’t happen – coming up with one plan after another, a devilish child skipping through the woods not knowing just what the consequences of her actions will be.

 

Preminger was a demanding director, and Jean Seberg was his discovery and protégé, and he was determined to make her a star – first in Saint Joan (1957) and then in this, the following year. The first film was considered an embarrassment, and the reviews for Seberg weren’t great here either – although it did win her some important fans in France – with Francois Truffaut calling her the best actress in Europe, and Jean-Luc Godard going so far as to cast her in Breathless (1960) – and even saying that she is essentially playing the same character in both films. Hers is the key performance in Bonjour Tristesse – and it’s a great one. She plays Cecile as a sociopath – but not an irredeemable one. Like many teenagers, Cecile is incapable of seeing the consequences of her actions until it too late – the games she plays have real consequences, but by the time she realizes it, it is too late. She just wants things to stay the same – and while she gets what she wants, she is miserable – leading to the mesmerizing final shot of the film.

 

Niven is terrific here as well. He is playing off his image as a cad here, but strangely, he is able to go deeper here, by showing us how blithely shallow Raymond is. He sees what is happening, not completely, but enough, but simply doesn’t care. This was the same year he would win an Oscar for Separate Tables, playing a gay character, who is given a bizarre sexual backstory because of course, you couldn’t say he was gay in 1958 – although that is precisely how Niven played him anyway. It shows some range that he gave the two performances in the same year, Deborah Kerr is fine as Anna – but like Niven, she is playing off her own image of being prim and proper, but unlike Niven, isn’t given the opportunity to really undermine that image at all.

 

Bonjour Tristesse also looks terrific – as was standard from a Preminger film. The cinematography by George Perinal is terrific – both in the sun drenched technicolor of the French Rivera, and the cold, glassy black and white of Paris. The film wasn’t seen as a success when it was released in 1958 – but is now becoming seen as the masterwork it is – and a key film in the career of the wonderful, tragic Seberg.