Return from the Ashes

Certain films travel just below the radar. "Return from the Ashes" is such a film. The ones who've seen it never forget it but somehow it's nowhere to be found. Never on video and so far not on DVD. I'm not going to tell you about the devilish plot because that's most of the pleasure of seeing it for the first time. Just let me wet your appetite by saying that Maximilian Schell plays a young amoral polish guy who seduces a French, older, wealthy widow, played for real by a great Ingrid Thulin. The action takes place at the dawn of the German occupation. She is Jewish he is not. When Schell asks her to marry him, she laughs it off as a surprisingly conventional request but he means it saying "At this time is not convention but defiance" So he marries the older Jewish woman...that's all I'm going to tell you about the story. Samantha Eggar, beautiful and skinny gives a powerful performance of seductive evilness. She is a stand out of major proportions. The ending seems a bit of a commercial concession but it doesn't spoil the cleverly tailored plot. If you see it announced on late night TV, set up your VCR or whatever contraption at your disposal.

Once upon a time, before the giallos and the slasher films took over, there was an undercurrent of clever thrillers ... where you knew who had done it, but the question was could they get away with it? The earliest one I can remember is The Unsuspected with Claude Raines as a DJ with a mission ... In the '60's we had director William Castle's twisted thrillers (Homicidal is my favorite) and Bette Davis as Baby Jane and Charlotte ... then along came Return from the Ashes, at about the same time as Bunny Lake Is Missing. Ladies and gentlemen, RftA is a stunning thriller which will keep you enthralled from the expositionary opening to the wonderfully complex plot developments. Why is this not available to viewers today? This is a movie I would like to show friends. Hard to believe it was 40 + years ago I sat in a darkened theater enraptured by the clever plot with more twists and turns than you could believe. If you see this movie in any listings, record it! Ingrid Thulin, Samantha Eggar and Maximilian Schell pull out all the stops but they make you BELIEVE the lurid goings-on. Too bad movie makers can't look at these old classics and learn how to pace and plot a good thriller.

One of those excellent films that has never been released on video or DVD. The first time I watched this there were only 2 other channels and both were showing programs I hated at that particular moment, so I ended up watching this film by default. What luck! I was treated to a beautiful, haunting film that featured great performances by Herbert Lom, Samantha Eggar, Maxmillian Schell and Ingrid Thulin. Thulin's performance in particular is flawless. She is utterly convincing as a death camp survivor trying to return to the world. If cable ever gets tired of endlessly re-running "Jaws", "The Breakfast Club" and "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" (Excellent films but shown 5 nights a week) and happens to air this true gem, be SURE you see/record it. The second time I caught it was on PBS--20 years after my initial viewing.

TCM gave this movie two stars. Ridiculous. I saw this film YEARS ago. I never forgot it and at one point, I tried to find out the name of it and was directed to another film. I suspected when I read the plot on the channel guide that this was the movie.

Set in flashback in pre-war Paris and in the present in post-war Paris, the story concerns a doctor, Michele, (beautiful Ingrid Thulin) hopelessly in love with Stanislaus, a chess-playing roué, excellently played by Maximillian Schell.

He doesn't pretend to love her - he likes her, but what he loves is her money. They marry, but because she's Jewish, she's picked up and sent to Dachau.

During the time she's gone, her husband becomes involved with her now grown-up albeit unstable stepdaughter Fabienne (Samantha Eggar). After the war ends, and Michele doesn't return, Fabienne and Stan assume she's dead. However, because of the laws in France they can't get their hands on her money.

The truth is that Michele is alive, but had to go to a sanitarium after the war to recover from her horrendous experiences in the camp. She's scarred and aged, and when she finally returns to Paris, she stays in a hotel and turns to an old colleague, Charles (Herbert Lom) to fix her up.

When Fabienne spots what she thinks is a Michele-lookalike (actually Michele), she comes up with a plan to have her stepmother return from the dead, with the imposter taking a cut.

A really good movie, very intriguing, with good performances all around and excellent photography. I'm so sick of being burned by TCM's ratings - four stars for trash and two stars for a fine movie like this (not all the time, but occasionally).

By the way, this story is based on a novel by Hubert Monteilhet called "Return from the Ashes," and was remade into the magnificent German film "Phoenix."

Highly recommended.

This film has suffered a strange fate. It used to be shown on tv all the time and was inevitably given two stars, when it is in fact a four-star movie. It is inconceivable that there is not plot summary here, so here goes:

Michelle, a currently single middle-aged medical doctor with a young daughter [already daring for the time], encounters the young fortune hunter Stanislaus in a casual meeting and makes him her boy toy. Michelle happens to be Jewish in Nazi-occupied Paris. When the Nazis do their thing, gentile Stan marries her in a moment of bravura that belies his true character. Nevertheless, they carry Michelle off to concentration camp. Several years after the war ends, she turns up and reunites with Charles, her former colleague at the hospital. She is so worn and haggard that she is hardly recognizable. Charles performs some plastic surgery, then she runs into Stan, who has taken up with Michelle's beautiful and still somewhat girlish daughter Gabby. Stan sees the striking resemblance and asks "Mme. Robert" if she will impersonate his supposedly late wife because French law won't give Gabby access to her mother's assets without a dead or alive body. Michelle agrees because she thinks it might be fun, but soon reveals herself as the real Michelle. Stan pretends to be reconciled with Michelle but plots with Gabby against her life.

This is the longest summary I have written because it is a very convoluted but masterfully managed plot. This is a much more convincing movie about mistaken/not mistaken identity than Hitchcock's "Vertigo." It is a three-character movie and all three are magnificent. I have left enough out of the summary to keep you in considerable suspense.