La passante du Sans-Souci

Don't let the opportunity pass by to watch another movie with Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider.

Don't expect anything. Strange enough, Kessel wrote great stuff, but in the end this one plot here doesn't cut it. It has holes between the original and the screenplay. So the plot moves along in a clever way, though continuously stumbling over its own feet. Like not using whatever the plot offers, but dragging in detail.

I don't want to go into the spoiler section, therefore I offer a short sentence only on the ending: It doesn't fit. It isn't quite logic. And the very end looks like an effort in educating the audience. Why, actually, after a movie that has already been filled with ethic and moral goodness, and painted the bad guys in all possible shadows of black.

Were it not for the fantastic three main characters, it would be thumbs down.

This is one movie I saw when i was a kid: maybe with parents, maybe with school, i can't say now. The only thing I remember before this projection is that's a sad story between Romy and a kid in the Nazi time. surprised to be back in the Paris of the 80s as the start of the movie as it remains a golden period for me. In France, everyone, everything seems filled with a sense of new age, new spirit, new ideas that technology today fails to bring. For those like me who interests in human rights, you can see that maybe the world has gone in a good direction as all the abuses Piccolli addresses in his speech are now closed: Ireland, Apartheid, South America, USSR.

Then, the movie goes indeed back to time and it's a bit "Schindler's list" and "Music Box" before them. Usually now, when a single mother is left with her kid, i get anxious for the family but here it wasn't really my feeling: the kid is too much in Oedipus complex and Romy is too much into her husband. Nothing really happens between them. Piccoli is as serious and rock as usual and it's a bit strange that he begins as the youngest character and ends like the oldest (as the make-up are not really good).

In my opinion, all the emotion of the movie comes from Gerard Klein, who plays the typical easy-going French: at first, he can't believe the Nazi system and finally comes to discover it. The final twist is accurate as vengeance can be a never-ending drama and it offers the opportunity to Jean Reno to claim he has played with Romy!

'La passante du Sans-Souci' (distributed in the English language markets as 'The Passerby') is the last film in which Romy Schneider appeared. It is a film that the actress really wanted to make, both for personal and professional reasons. It was filmed in two periods in 1981, a dramatic year for Romy. Filming, which began in the spring, was interrupted because she broke a leg and resumed towards the end of the year, but in the meantime she had to deal with the accidental death of her 14-year-old son and the news that she had cancer. She managed to complete the filming and was able to attend the French premiere in April 1982. A month later she would die, so 'La passante du Sans-Souci' remained her farewell film. Romy Schneider creates an overwhelming (double!) role and the presence of Michel Piccoli alongside her is formidable. The film, as a whole, however, disappoints.

We may wonder why Jacques Rouffio was chosen to direct this film? Today we consider him an average director with a thin filmography, but in 1967 he had made a film ('L'Horizon') that addressed a taboo subject of French history - a revolt of soldiers during the First World War, after which he was not entrusted with a another project for almost a decade. He had returned to the fore with two other films that did not avoid controversy, and perhaps because of this fame he was entrusted with directing the screen version of Joseph Kessel's novel, which is the basis of the script. At a time when France had not yet assumed many of the responsibilities of collaboration and deportations during the Second World War, and when neo-Nazi movements were raising their heads again, this film brings to the screen the story of a crime and a trial which bring to the surface events that a large part of the French ignored or wanted to forget.

The problem is that the script is excessively rhetorical and melodramatic, and the historical parallel between the 40s and the 80s is far too demonstrative to be effective. The film begins with a slightly implausible murder. Max Baumstein, the president of a large international democratic organization, a kind of Amnesty International, assassinates the ambassador of Paraguay. He turns out to be a former Nazi officer who during the war had destroyed the lives of the man's adoptive parents. Most of the story is a reenactment of the events of the 1930s through Baumstein's confessions to his wife and trial testimonies. The ending is meant to be a warning about the danger of neo-Nazism that refuses to leave the stage of history.

The performance of Romy Schneider - who plays the roles of Baumstein's wife and the boy's adoptive mother - is intense and emotional. We know today that the actress was already dealing with a serious illness, but none of the physical beauty and inner light that we had admired for more than two decades of her career seemed to have diminished in intensity. Michel Piccoli also has a generous part and plays it with charismatic dignity. However, I found the rest of the cast much less inspired and some of the story details are implausible. 'La passante du Sans-Souci' is worth seeing for the meeting between Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli and for the great farewell that the formidable actress dedicates us through this last creation of hers on the screen.

Joseph Kessel was a pillar of the French literary world. A Jewish writer who often wrote about war and exotic locales, he was elected to the Academy, becoming a sort of Hemingway figure. North Americans know him through The Lion (Cardiff), Night of the Generals (Litvak), and The Horsemen (Frankenheimer). The latter had one of the best performances by Omar Sharif I can recall. L'Armee des ombres (Melville) was one of the most moving resistance stories I've seen. Too, he wrote Belle de Jour, which all Deneuve fans are eternally grateful for.

This film is not on a level with the others. Slow, talky, and with the political themes not fully brought out (although the scene with Maria Schell and the urn containing her husband's ashes is wonderful), I'd be hard pressed to make a case for it as essential viewing. For Romy Schneider completists.

I have enjoyed some wonderful French films. Among them are some of the most insightful cinema experiences I can recall. Thought provoking, adult in their treatment of relationships, written with interesting characters and subtle performances. Some have remained in my mind for days after seeing them - very satisfying entertainment. But not this one.