La vieille dame indigne

I saw this film in Paris in its original release at 20 years of age, and it has always stayed with me. If the film has a message, it might be to live life with dignity, in spite of the weaknesses of others and your own burdens, and when the chance presents itself to live it to its fullest. The movie's ending, when we see the photos of Sylvie "en vacances", is as poignant as I have experienced.

Now if I can only find out where to rent it, to enjoy it again.

One of the least known films of the French New Wave perhaps because the subject matter is so old-fashioned like something you might have seen in the French cinema of the thirties or forties, (even the setting, Marseille, is the same as in Pagnol's famous trilogy). Berthe, (Sylvie, a lovely performance), has been widowed in her eighties and, for the first time in her life, begins to live much to the consternation of her family.

Not a great deal happens; its dramas are fairly small-scale but it's definitely a charmer and there's not a jot of sentimentality on view. Sylvie underplays beautifully and she's backed by an excellent cast while director Rene Allio films it with a documentary-like attention to detail. OK, it was never going to light up the cinema in the way that the films of Godard or Truffaut did but there is so much here to like and to discover.

It was to be Sylvie's last part and ,although she made a brilliant career ,it was the only movie where she got the lead.It would be an insult to the users' culture to mention all the great French works she was in.Just check her filmography,they are all in here:Carné,Duvivier,Clouzot,Bresson,Autant-Lara,Grémillon,and even (yuk) Vadim.

"The shameless old lady" was a (very) short story by Bertold Brecht ("Die unwürdige Greisin" ) from a book called "Kalender Gechichten" .The scenarists were faithful to the German writer's spirit and they developed the plot with taste .

A sixty-something woman became a widow .All her life,she had been cooking ,washing and taking care of her family.A woman's work is never done.So she decided she would live for herself: she would go to the pictures ,she would buy a car and that's exactly what she did.

Bertold Brecht told us so:she had two lives:the first one was a long busy one,the second one was very short;but she ate the bread of life till its last crumbs (that's the last line of his story) The first part of her life is summarized during the cast and credits when old black and white photographs appear on the screen while we can hear Jean Ferrat's beautiful song "On ne Voit Pas le Temps Passer" (=time passes you by).The second one is the film itself and it's full of joie de vivre,it's really a film about happiness,as "Babette's feast" would be twenty years later.

A must.

I have wanted to see this film for around forty years, since I first read the brief reviews in the Leonard Maltin and Steven Scheuer film guides. And at last I have - and it was worth the wait!! Veteran French character actress Sylvie (whose film career started in the 1910's) stars as Berthe, an elderly woman in her eighties whose husband of sixty years has just died. The duo had lived quietly and apparently not that happily. A rather frosty family whose grown children are distant emotionally if not location-wise and rarely visit. The film follows Sylvie's months following her husband's death as she ventures out from the small apartment and local neighborhood and starts walking around the big city to discover the modern world, making friends with a thirtyish woman of dubious virtue and a eccentric fortyish man who runs a shoe repair shop. The local villagers are scandalized by the old gal venturing out into world, particularly with such questionable associates and Berthe's neurotic, luckless, failed businessman son Albert (Etienne Bherry) is especially concerned, sending his 20ish son Pierre (Victor Lanoux), an aimless young man who plays pop music with his buddies, to check on the old gal.

If you are expecting a Gallic version of a Ruth Gordon vehicle, this is not it. This is a gentle, slice of life drama (some have labeled it a comedy but there is only a mild touch of humor in it) with a moving performance by Sylvie that is so natural it evokes the legend of Laurette Taylor in "The Glass Menagerie". Sylvie and the film both won many deserved honors at film Festivals for this beautiful film but the supporting cast is equally good, especially Lanoux, Berry, and Malka Ribowska as the easy living and easy loving waitress Rosalie. I wasn't familiar with any of these French actors before, sadly this trio all passed away within the last five years or so (2022). The ending is one of the most tastefully poignant film climaxes I have ever seen. A true masterpiece, it sadly is rarely mentioned in film histories of French cinema but deserves to be noted in depth.

Sweet, simple, moving, funny, well acted French film of old woman 'finding' herself after her husband's death, and the struggle her family has in accepting and dealing with the new her.

Quietly subversive, it's based on a story by Brecht.

While we're set up to expect a tragic tale of an old woman widowed and alone, instead we're treated to a wonderfully life affirming saga of how it's never too late to change, to grow, and to become young in spirit.

Great theme song, too.

The saddest thing is that such a wonderful (and well loved) film is so hard to find. This best I've been able to do is a truly bad quality VHS tape from some years back. This minor classic is worthy of far better.