La passante du Sans-Souci

This is one movie I saw when i was a kid: maybe with parents, maybe with school, i can't say now. The only thing I remember before this projection is that's a sad story between Romy and a kid in the Nazi time. surprised to be back in the Paris of the 80s as the start of the movie as it remains a golden period for me. In France, everyone, everything seems filled with a sense of new age, new spirit, new ideas that technology today fails to bring. For those like me who interests in human rights, you can see that maybe the world has gone in a good direction as all the abuses Piccolli addresses in his speech are now closed: Ireland, Apartheid, South America, USSR.

Then, the movie goes indeed back to time and it's a bit "Schindler's list" and "Music Box" before them. Usually now, when a single mother is left with her kid, i get anxious for the family but here it wasn't really my feeling: the kid is too much in Oedipus complex and Romy is too much into her husband. Nothing really happens between them. Piccoli is as serious and rock as usual and it's a bit strange that he begins as the youngest character and ends like the oldest (as the make-up are not really good).

In my opinion, all the emotion of the movie comes from Gerard Klein, who plays the typical easy-going French: at first, he can't believe the Nazi system and finally comes to discover it. The final twist is accurate as vengeance can be a never-ending drama and it offers the opportunity to Jean Reno to claim he has played with Romy!

I saw it only for Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli. And I was seduced by this story about decisions who are only answers to the past events. I was seduced by acting and construction of story and the way to explore the moral dimension of a gesture and a relation.

A beautiful film first for the questions proposed.

For the science to transform the viewer in part of story.

For details . For acting. For suggestions and for twist.

A film offering more than a good story but fair portrait of games of apparences, birth of decisions and trust.

Romy Schneider, superb as always explores in admirable manner the nuances of her character , offering more than touching lines of a powerful lady.

Mercy for this movie! It is not one of the greatest, it doesn't avoid some "kitsch", and is parallelization of nazism and neonazism is more than naiv... I know. But when you have the chance to see one of the most beautiful women ever appeared on a movie screen - Romy Schneider -, and see her accompanied by such a fine french actor as Michel Piccoli is - wouldn't it be foolish to play the severe judge?

Joseph Kessel was a pillar of the French literary world. A Jewish writer who often wrote about war and exotic locales, he was elected to the Academy, becoming a sort of Hemingway figure. North Americans know him through The Lion (Cardiff), Night of the Generals (Litvak), and The Horsemen (Frankenheimer). The latter had one of the best performances by Omar Sharif I can recall. L'Armee des ombres (Melville) was one of the most moving resistance stories I've seen. Too, he wrote Belle de Jour, which all Deneuve fans are eternally grateful for.

This film is not on a level with the others. Slow, talky, and with the political themes not fully brought out (although the scene with Maria Schell and the urn containing her husband's ashes is wonderful), I'd be hard pressed to make a case for it as essential viewing. For Romy Schneider completists.

Don't let the opportunity pass by to watch another movie with Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider.

Don't expect anything. Strange enough, Kessel wrote great stuff, but in the end this one plot here doesn't cut it. It has holes between the original and the screenplay. So the plot moves along in a clever way, though continuously stumbling over its own feet. Like not using whatever the plot offers, but dragging in detail.

I don't want to go into the spoiler section, therefore I offer a short sentence only on the ending: It doesn't fit. It isn't quite logic. And the very end looks like an effort in educating the audience. Why, actually, after a movie that has already been filled with ethic and moral goodness, and painted the bad guys in all possible shadows of black.

Were it not for the fantastic three main characters, it would be thumbs down.