Retour à l'aube

Well, it was the 5th of the nine movies Danielle Darrieux made under the direction of her then husband, Henri Decoin. And for me, it is certainly one of the best.

Shot on locations in Hungary, this is a sort of 'Bildungsroman', of the cruel sort, based on Vicki Baum's novel. Anita, a young new-wed wife, is going to the big city, for family matters. She is supposed to return before night, by the 6.00 pm train, but she misses it... And she'll learn the hard way that she is too small for big cities.

The copy I saw was in very poor condition. Some of the efforts in the editing look clumsy, but all is redeemed by the value of the story and its growing tension, and the quality of the cast, with special mentions for Pierre Dux, Jacques Dumesnil, Pierre Mingand and Marcel Delaître.

And, above all, Danielle Darrieux. Didn't the character wonderfully played by Charlotte Kady, in Bertrand Tavernier's "Laissez-passer", said it one for all: "Darrieux ? Elle a tout !".

A last word to salute the very good Paul Misraki's score.

And now, I'm going to try to put the cast in its right order, on the IMDb file...

"Retour A l'Aube" belongs to Decoin's light-hearted rosy comedies but its last part foreshadows his brilliant series of films noirs in the forties,which he would continue in the following decade,with relatively less artistic success.

Sorry,Didier (the precedent user) but I do not think that it's one of the best works by Decoin.It takes place in a chocolate box Hungary ,where you pay ,as everyone past infancy must know,in Francs (!).The first scene (the wedding) is given a folk treatment complete with costumes and music ,but it does not fool people .

Darrieux portrays some kind of Hungarian (!) Madame Bovary ,whose marriage to a station master has left her a frustrated woman :she dreams of romanticism and the train she takes to get to the big city will allow her to become Cinderella for one night.

As I wrote above ,the most interesting thing about this okay movie is the elements of thriller which bursts into what was a charming dreamlike tale ;this is the key to Decoin's future as he will make his way through the forties ,with "L'Homme De Londres" "Les Inconnus Dans La Maison" and culminate with these overlooked desperate movies such as "La Fille Du Diable" (IMHO ,his masterpiece)or ""Les Amants Du Pont Saint-Jean"