"Le Chien " must be one of the rare MTV movies of the era which features a silver screen star ,and a very famous at that:Alain Delon,in 1962,after Visconti's and Clément's works was already a superstar ;why he agreed to play in a low budget MTV work is pretty amazing.
Dare it be said:Delon is miscast ;he is too handsome to portray successfully a lonesome man in love ....with his dog ;in fact,the only scenes that are still fine today are the ones with the animal. Besides ,François Chalais ,a reporter and a cinema historian,must have loved the Nouvelle Vague flicks very much ,for his movie resembles theirs:the interminable scene in the park strongly recalls that of Cleo and Antoine in "Cléo De 5 à 7",released the same year.There are numerous hints at WW2,for the girl the hero meets (Elke Sommer) is German;don't we learn that his parents died in the concentration camps ?The definitive reconciliation of France and Germany took place the following year (1963) ,thanks to De Gaulle and Adenauer.The barman says he knows nice people among the Germans,but a bit reluctantly.
This "Le Chien" found its director succumbing to all the Nouvelle Vague vices :filming on location,very loose screenplay,fortune cookie philosophies,"deep" meanings ,endless wanderings ,cult of youth .I Wonder what could have been the TV viewers' reaction to such a deadly dull work :considering the TV series and dramas which were made at the time,I guess they must have needed some aspirin.
