Le retour du soldat

I was drawn to this film because of the cast and the fact that it was a Rebecca West story. After viewing the film I found myself so overwhelmed by it that I had to return to the theater the next day to see it again. In the second viewing I was able to truly "watch" the film. Alan Bridges attention to detail was astounding, as when Jenny dropped a comb onto the white fur rug in the window area of Kitty's bedroom as she saw Margaret approaching their house. When Margaret sat in the foyer waiting and gently touched a small figurine of a little boy with her loving finger. All one needed to know about the character of Margaret Allington was revealed. One tends to overlook the work of Ann-Margaret among this seasoned,professional cast. Her connection with Chris Baldry was completely believable,poignant and ultimately heart breaking. Excellent work. In a stroke of genius Bridges set the deciding scene in which Margaret tells Chris of his dead son (and is ultimately restored to a present day state of mind) far away from our viewing eyes. We cannot see the expression on Chris' face as he hears the news. We can only see his physical reaction to the tragic news and then finally Margaret standing a minute alone as he "returns" to the house before she turns and walks away. A brilliant handling of arguably the most important scene in the film. Alan Bridges was among the greatest of directors.

Everything about this film is brilliant, and it is one of the finest films to come out of England in the 1980s. Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson, and Julie Christie, all give some of the most glowing and inspired performances of their entire careers. The film is based upon a haunting novel by Rebecca West (undoubtedly based on real situations she had encountered when she was young), with an excellent script by Hugh Whitemore. The film's evocative atmosphere is immensely powerful, aided greatly by the excellent musical score by Richard Rodney Bennett, which brings out the flavour of the film as salt, garlic and rosemary bring out the flavour of roast lamb. The editing is particularly good, by Laurence Méry-Clark. Ian Holm, Frank Finlay, and Jeremy Kemp are all very good in their supporting roles, which are relatively small. A surprise is Ann-Margret as Cousin Jenny, a major role. For a good-time American girl involved with the Rat Pack in Las Vegas, to play a repressed English spinster of 1918 to perfection was no mean achievement, and shows she was a real actress. Such versatility, and it is a pity she did not do more of that. The direction by Alan Bridges is exquisitely sensitive and nearly perfect. His other major achievements were directing THE HIRELING (1973, see my review), and THE SHOOTING PARTY (1985). He ceased working as long ago as 1990. He was a truly inspired director, most of whose output was of quality television which is not available to see today. This tragic tale concerns an English soldier, Captain Baldry (Alan Bates), who has returned from the First War with shell shock. He cannot remember the last twenty years of his life. Such cases did occur, and all this is not just made up. Julie Christie (who in real life is a sweetie) plays the horribly snobbish, vain, unfeeling wife of Bates who takes personal offence that he cannot remember her and does not find her attractive. She has little concern for his welfare or mental heath but keeps trying to force herself and his former life back on him, inviting neighbours to dinner the night after he returns home, with the opposite results to what she intended, of course. Her insensitivity to others is exceeded only by her self love. Bates under-plays his role, which makes it all the more effective. He cannot believe the vacuity of his former existence, and after asking Christie to tell him what their life together had been like and what they used to do all day, he says pathetically: 'Is that all?' They live in a grand house in the country and are exceedingly rich, with their house full of servants. All he can think of is his first great love, when he was twenty, a girl named Margaret (Glenda Jackson). She is found and meets him again after twenty years. She is married, as he is, and we eventually learn that each has a lost a child of the same age in the same year. In a wonderful and poignant scene with Cousin Jenny, Jackson says mournfully of the two lost children: 'It's as if each had only half a life.' Jackson is still in love with Bates and had never ceased to be. They lost touch because of circumstances when young, and now their love has come back. Bates keeps telling her he loves her, and acts like a boy of twenty again when he is with her. Christie seethes with rage but can do nothing, as all her attempts to insult Jackson are water off a duck's back, and merely drive her herself further into irrelevance. Cousin Jenny is wholly in sympathy with Bates but is exposed as hopelessly ineffectual. She lives a wan existence in the huge household, as a family retainer with no future of her own. The subtlety with which all this is enacted and portrayed is what could be called 'the best of English tact'. Every touch is delicate, countless nuances are allowed to drift in the enchanted air of the isolated domain of the great house. Everyone dresses for dinner, and having to put on white tie every evening to come down to dine with one's wife and cousin is shown for the empty ritual it is, accepted, however, as part of a tradition which cannot be openly questioned. After all, in that long-vanished society, formality was the badge of belonging, and if you did not wear your white tie to private dinners with your own wife at home you were no longer 'one of us'. With his recent memory erased, Bates comes perilously close to experiencing exclusion from polite society because he cannot remember anyone and, through his innocence acquired courtesy of an enemy shell against his head, dares to question what he never dared to examine before. As his psychiatrist Ian Holm says, bringing someone like that back to 'normality' might merely mean bringing him back to unhappiness. Without having read the original novel, I can sense beneath the surface of this story a savage attack on the manners and mores of the privileged elite of the time. Presumably Rebecca West was not the girlfriend of socialist H. G. Wells for nothing, and they would have shared an agenda of attacking the root of privilege. Here this is done with immense but devastating subtlety through what in the end becomes a fable thrown like one of the German bombs against the fortress of the elite, as epitomised by the odious character of the voraciously selfish and spoilt Julie Christie. By contrast, Jackson leads a relatively impoverished life in Wealdstone (a location viciously mocked by Christie), married to a boring man, wrapped up in her baking and housework. Appallingly dressed, Christie calls her 'the dowd'. But Bates loves her madly, and ignores Christie. This film will remain a genuine and enduring classic.

This is superb - the acting wonderful, sets, clothes, music - but most of all the story itself.

I am amazed there aren't more reviews of this movie - certainly one of the best of the 1980s.

It's also a wonderful movie to see in tandem with the great "Random Harvest" which has much the same opening crisis

-- a middle aged, unknown English W.W.I officer is in a hospital toward the close of the war, suffering from shell shock and complete amnesia without any idea of his name, origin, or anywhere he belongs - he proves to be a very wealthy established man - when he "recovers", he will not remember the years before the war --

But there the movies' resemblances end.

My warmest thanks to all who participated in the movie - particularly the actors Ian Holm, Alan Bates, Ann Margret (what a great and surprising casting choice), Glenda Jackson, Julie Christie.

This one stays with you forever.

With the advent of the IMDb, this overlooked movie can now find an interested audience. Why? Because users here who do a search on two-time Academy Award winner Glenda Jackson can find 'The Return of The Soldier' among her credits. So can those checking out Oscar winner Julie Christie. Fans of Ann-Margret can give the title a click, as will those looking into the career of the great Alan Bates. Not to mention the added bonus of a movie with supporting heavyweights Ian Holm and Frank Finlay. Any movie with so many notables in it is rewarded by the IMDb, given all the cross-referencing that goes on here. So, why isn't this movie out on DVD? Don't the Producers realize the Internet Movie Database is a marketing gift for such a film? And 'The Return of The Soldier' is definitely a gem waiting to be discovered. Get with it, people.

This expensive, mainstream UK/US co-production,backed and distributed by 20th Century Fox, was at its Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival,shamelessly overlooked! They called it a well made,TV mini-series look-a-like, overly coated with thick layers of saccharine wanna be romantic drama. Since,after such poor reviews,despite the huge international Cast,and its enchanted settings, this wonderful,delicate,yet very poignant adaptation of one of Rebecca West's more controversial novels,ever, an extremely beautifully produced, extraordinarily acted moving,psychological period story,was cursed by bad Distributions worldwide, and I finally got to see it when i was about 15, in NYC in 1984, where, again, despite a fine launch,the movie was yet very quickly dismissed by main critics. I always loved Julie Christie and Glenda Jackson,and I remember almost forcing my mother to the Theater in one late spring,chilly rainy afternoon! I was expecting a true misfire and was just interested to see the Stars, whom, as we all know too well, have chosen way too many years ago, not to work very often (however Christie had huge and rightly raved come back's in the 1990's on stage or in great films like Universal's "Dragonheart",and as the lead Queen Gertrude in the stellar, big studio rendition of Kenneth Branagh's superb "Hamlet",followed by a Best Actress Oscar nominations and Best Actress Indy Spirit Awards Winner for her mesmerizing turn in Robert Altman's production of Alan Rudolph's "Afterglow" in 1998, and then has worked in very interesting films like Hal Hartley's also underrated "No such thing" in 2001,played Brad Pitt's mother in "Troy"(2004),was excellent in the wonderfully touching,Awards winning "Finding Neverland"(2005) and had a personal triumph, as Fiona,the still beautiful,Alzhaimer's disease affected lady who forgets her husband in Sarah Polley's outstanding Awards winner "Away from Her" in 2007,while she'll be just paired opposite Robert Redford's in the much awaited big budget political thriller "The Company you keep" due out next Awards Season! And forgive me for all this extra info on Christie, but It just excites me,that we are at least be able to see her, and forever haunting and gorgeous in very selected films, at least, while,Jackson has unfortunately left the scenes,apparently for good,in the late 1980's!). Well, once the tail credits of "The Return of the Soldier" were rolling, I noticed tears on my mother's eyes, and I was like electrified. While i can understand that today,still remaining a great solid film, has lost all that mystery and unique impeccable period reconstruction, and cinematography's merits, due to the almost overwhelming abundance of period romantic drama's that followed in the 1990's, and not just from Merchant-Ivory's, but also from many others, and not always so exceptional, as they were then reviewed, you have to understand that back then,i guess in early 1984, a so classic structured film,shot with such an innovative use, of flashbacks,haunting,dark and saturated cinematography,embracing some of the loveliest possible tones of a canvas,its unique editing and also formidable scoring, were not so common! I actually truly believe that the Cult that this film has developed (mostly in Europe) has certainly inspired all those numerous British/US co-productions that became instead so wildly popular in the 1990's and,again, not all of them, as good! Mother and I were stunned, by the film, its simple yet extremely moving twist at the end, a few very dramatic revelations, just staged with almost strict attention to measure, and,of course,besides the extremely sensitive,refined work from extremely focused director Alan Bridges (here at his very,very best,both with the sophisticated,yet deeply haunting narration,to the strong-back then- lovely and personal visual choices), we were delighted by the work of all the cast: a deeply penetrating performance from Jackson,a role that only Christie's natural Iconic talent could have made even sympathetic at the end, and certainly so gorgeous to look at, an extremely controlled,measured Alan Bates,here really offering almost a new face to his whole career, and the surprise of watching adorable, Ann-Margret, without make up and playing flawlessly, against type, the role of shy, sweet,if repressed and lonely, relative,kept in the wealth of her house by Kitty(Christie),almost more like a servant,or a useful house guest, than a real close and devoted relative. I can only say that,immediately back then, we sent many people,who were not truly convinced about going to a Theater to watch this excellent movie,always calling us back to thank us for the pitch or even so emotionally touched to want to come over over tea to discuss it! And throughout the years, I always heard incredible things about it,from almost anyone's with a certain sensibility for a superior,more eloquent and artistic type of filmmaking! And i can only still highly recommend it to most people: but please,just make sure to get a greater DVD widescreen copy, and not,another TV formatted, and brutally cut for commercials copy: this is a movie, rich of its own and unique fascinating atmosphere, and like a painting, should be appreciated at its best and most respectful vision, and not in some pan and scan TV version! Enjoy.