Marianne de ma jeunesse

Style, setting, lighting, and mood are the strong points of this coming of age film, replete with youthful exuberance, faith, yearning and near fairy-tale trappings. However, once you get beyond mood and atmosphere, the film, upon reflection, is quite pedestrian in its plot and dialogue. I first saw this film when I was 12 years old, and it made a major impression on me. I've never seen it screened anywhere else (and I've had serious arguments with very knowledgeable buffs about whether or not it actually existed), and, honestly, I don't know if I ever want to see it again and risk losing that sense of youthful wonder.

This strange romantic fantasy is entrancing at times, but overall it feels like an elongated Twilight Zone episode, with a vague payoff. There might be some Oedipal (in Vincent's fixation on his - unseen - mother) and homosexual (in Manfred's fixation on Vincent - he never stops singing his praises throughout the movie) implications, but with the censorship restrictions of the era, it's hard to know for sure. Or maybe these things are intentionally left up to the individual interpretation of each viewer. **1/2 out of 4.

I'm also a captive-fan of this movie. I watched it when I was 12 and I really didn't understand at all, but while I was growing I remember and learned many things about this movie and I kept yearning to watch again the movie or read Peter Mendelsohn's novel. As others commentaries I remember it as a dream or as a fantasy that perhaps never watched. There is a comment in the movie that I'll remember forever, the old man who Vincent suspect has Marianne imprisons tell him "nowadays there are no ogres keeping Princess, there are only old men with cloudy eyes by the tears" or something like that. Can someone help me find one or another, novel or movie? In the case of the movie I'll prefer the french version with English or Spanish subtitles or the English version and in the case of novel I'll like French, English or if exist Spanish version. Thank you.

...who tried to walk across the lake

Of course it was winter and all this was ice

They say the lake is as big as the ocean

I wonder if he knew about it.... (Yoko Ono,lyrics slightly modified)

In the early thirties ,it was usual to film the same movie in French and in German.Duvivier did it with "Les Cinq Gentlemans Maudits " ,his peer Robert Siodmak did the same for "Tumultes" ("Sturme Der Leidenschaft").In the mid-fifties ,it was less common,but anyway "Marianne" is unique,a movie which becomes stronger and stronger each time you watch it .I've received more messages about it than about any other Duvivier 's movie ...and than any other French movie!It's incredibly popular in Japan ,and if it so, it's because it's not a movie like the other ones ,it's not a movie like the other Duvivier (although the director had already shown lots of flair for mysterious dreamlike atmospheres as "La Charrette Fantome" and his best American film "Flesh and Fantasy" testify .

Like many Duvivier's buffs,I saw the French version first.When you compare the two movies,it's to state the obvious to write that Horst Buchholz is a better Vincent than Pierre Vaneck .He was often nicknamed the German James Dean and he is ideally cast as an adolescent -although he was 23- for his boyish good looks ,his "Actor Studioesque playing and his face which always looks strained work wonders.Marianne Hold plays in the two movies (like her female co-star Isabelle Pia)and Duvivier films her lovingly :she and Buchholz were par excellence the ideal couple.

"Marianne" is perhaps the most purely artistic work Duvivier ever created and in its own particular way,it stands with his best.The black and white cinematography is stunning and you go into raptures over these misty banks ,these forests full of deers ,this castle where boys have their first experience of friendship ,of love and of dreams;they are still dreaming of Prince Charming,of princesses in jeopardy,of villains waiting in the dark house across the lake which they say is haunted.The movie contains scenes that will have you on the edge of your seats : the concert ,beginning with a classical piece (Mozart) which seems to make the boys yawn their heads off and ending with a South American folk tune when the audience goes literally into a trance;Vincent ,beating the jealous girl ,an anti-romantic scene in the most romantic of all French movies of the fifties ;the storm which is not only around the castle -Duvivier had directed a similar scene in his portion of "destiny" for which he was not credited-;the mysterious mansion where they're preparing a feast complete with banquet ,flowers and altar but where nobody comes until...;and this extraordinary fair ,where the parade adds another disturbing touch...Are we in some Perrault's fairy tale?

"Marianne" is one of these rare movies which can mesmerize you.When it's over ,you ask to yourself:was it a dream? Was It a dream I had when I was younger,so much younger than today?

A Propos of Horst Buchholz : he did not make the career he deserved ,being too gifted for what the directors had to offer him.Who still remembers he was the physician in the concentration camp in "La Vita E Bella" ?At least he ended his career on a high note.

I saw this film on NHK TV in the midnight when I was in fifth or sixth grade. The story and the ambience might have been filled with a sort of bizarre, brought me a strange and stray feeling. Marianne herself was really attractive but made me figure that she is the existence beyond the actual universe. And the ending always leaves elusive feeling over me even for now, almost 50 years later. I really have been crazy about movies since I was a kid, fair to say, all sort and genre of movies. But I always had an unsolbed aftertaste lingering deep inside of my heart. That is this "Marianne of my youth". Until I got a university student, I couldn't reach this film once again and review it. As is often the case, I remembered that I had some sort of nostalgia but sense of lost at a time when I eventually encountered the film again and finished watching it.

It was really Marianne "of my youth".

Great master of Manga, Reiji Matsumoto died. And found that his representative character "Maetel" was created originally modeled by this "Marianne".