Amnesia has become a recurrent feature of the thriller : the best of the genre is probably Cayatte's "piège pour Cendrillon " in France and "spellbound" in America ;the heroine is also a a distant relative of George Peppard in Jack Smight's "the third day" (1966) and Tom Berenger in "shattered".
Michel Drach,then husband of Marie-José Nat ,who starred in most of his works was an electic director and that probably went against him :today he is unfairly forgotten :now comedies ("la bonne occase" ), now psychological drama about amour fou ("Amélie") ,now politically commited director ("Elise ou la vraie vie" ,"le pullover rouge ",) now remembering his childhood ("les violons du bal" ) and ....yes ...thrillers ..
The first movie he directed was a black and white film noir "on n'enterre pas le dimanche" in which the principal was a black man ,a daring move in the early sixties ;"le passé simple" looks like a Hitchcockian thriller in which the heroine is lost in a world she does not know anymore : even her husband has become a stranger ; on the verge of paranoia , she's afraid of the people she meets ,all seem to be living threats ; the best sequence shows Cécile, in a dehumanized urban landscape where her reflections in the glasses enhance her confusion :who is he? It's all the more disturbing since her husband lies to her and that visions haunt her ,a girl on a poster,a man named Bruno .
The title has too meaning : it's a tense of the French conjugation (past historic) which is only used in the books , in a distant past but never in the spoken language ; it can also be taken literally : Cecile's past is relatively "simple" and may disappoint the thrillers buff ; but Marie-José Nat displays a quivering sensitivity ,a hope against hope which will win you over ;Victor Lanoux,more at ease in comedies ,is less convincing .The accident will remind you of that of "les choses de la vie" (1970).
