A great cameraman who worked with Carné ("Le Jour Se Lève ""Les Portes De La Nuit"),Bresson ("Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne" ) ,Autant-Lara ("Douce")and many others ,Agostini was less talented when it came to making his own movies.
"Rencontres" was trashed ruthlessly.When this movie was released,a critic wrote that "it proved his total lack of cinematographic ideas and his incompetence as an actors director".
Let's not be so hard on "Rencontres";the first part drags on ,and the first sequence (Morgan meeting Ferzetti) is self-conscious and a most inadequate beginning for what is essentially a Film Noir.
By the second half ,the story takes off and suspense is sustained ,though the ending is botched.
A pianist 's hand was injured in a car crash and he had to give up on a brilliant career ;he wants his sister to become as great a musician as he used to be and she rehearses all day ,much to his wife's displeasure who's fed up with this all-day concert . The artist gambles all his fortune away in the casino;completely broke,he will "die" ,so his wife will collect his life insurance money;a diver ,he will not come back up to the surface,another boat will take him in .
But things do not happen according to plan: is the drowned person really dead?
Even though,if we are to believe the 1962 critic ,the actors are left to their own devices ,how can one be wrong with Pierre Brasseur as the cynical musician, Michèle Morgan as the distraught wife who thinks that her husband's "death" will allow her to start over with a handsome journalist (Gabriele Ferzetti)?And in a supporting part,let's not forget Monique Mélinand ,who harasses her sister-in- law.
To the credit of the movie, the TV broadcast is smartly used as pictures of the "dead" make him still alive.
Like this? Try these ...
"Obsession" by Jean Delannoy (1954)from William Irish aka Cornell Woolrich aka George Hopley.
"Retour De Manivelle" by Denys De La Patellière (1957) from James Hadley Chase.
Both feature Michèle Morgan and both are better thrillers than " Rencontres" .
