Alain Resnais brings a good mystery writer's snoopiness and creepiness to a fragmented, elliptical story focussing on the past and the secrets of an aging, part-time antiques dealer and compulsive gambler (Delphine Seyrig, shockingly deglamorized from Resnais's Marienbad), and her tormented stepson, just back from the Algerian War. The contemporary political comment doesn't amount to much, but the subtle poetic script by Jean Cayrol, who also wrote the text of Resnais's concentration-camp documentary, Night and Fog, is full of other resonances. The conceits, for example, of an apartment furnished entirely with items for sale and of a modern provincial city reconstructed atop its own ghost after WWII, are tremendously evocative. And Sacha Vierny's color work around this setting is sharp, diamond-hard, luminous -- some of the best ever seen on screen. Indeed the movie as a whole, multifaceted enough to support several viewings and to look a little different with each one, seems at times, from certain angles, to be also among the best ever. (1963) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.