Writer: Emile Zola (novel), Marcel Carne & Charles Spaak (film adaptation)
Director: Marcel Carne
Starring: Simone Signoret, Raf Vallone
Synopsis
a bored wife with a snivelly husband and a nagging, horrible, mother-in-law has an affair with a truck driver for her husband's company. they conspire on how to be together. the husband is thrown from a train. murder investigation.
MOster
We've had this problem many times before when watching old movies. This story is just too old hat for us to take it seriously enough; and that is reason #3 why we will never be more than armchair critics.
If you get away from the story--and el Woman HATES when I talk this way--things were competent if not better. There's not a single likeable character in this thing; and I think that's intentional. Characters were also drawn clearly and each had a personal point of view. Story-editing-wise, the whole third act felt tacked on to an extent; but it shows how much paying attention I was doing that I thought we were going the Double Indemnity route and the husband was in a long con.
This is probably an important part of cinematic history. Neither do you want to actually live on the Mayflower.
The Woman
maybe in 1953 this was a new plot, but many thousands of movies have been made since with a similar, if not exact replica of this plot. i have to admit i fell asleep while knitting while watching this movie. black and white with subtitles sometimes does that to me. i did only doze for the affair part. i was awake for the murder and subsequent investigation. i don't know. it was all just shme meh to me. i've seen it done so many times before it kind of blends in it's unoriginality, even if it did come earlier. forgettable.
side note: i had a hell of a time finding this on imdb because it's under a different title, but apparently it's been remade a TON. let me go get an exact number. nine. nine times. including one coming next year. starring draco malfoy as the snivelly husband. can we say type cast?
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