Maupassant scholars and pedants will find ample grist for their respective mills in this entry given that Astruc has opted to take the source material merely as a guide and instead of starting at A and proceeding inexorably to Z he has reserved the right to take a bowl of alphabet soup, select a letter at random, explore it, exhaust it and then select another and so on. It's not unlike taking War and Peace as your starting point and ending up with The Red Badge Of Courage; they have war in common but not a great deal else.
Arguably the photography gets the lion's share of the plaudits. Muted colour and time after time a grouping that suggests Renoir or other Impressionists. Somewhat bizarrely the music at times - notably the opening which is a sort of reverse Sound Of Music with a young girl running through a meadow but AWAY from the camera rather than towards it - seems to fight the lyricism sounding almost martial rather than melodic. Maria Schell was tailor made for the role of the young, idealistic girl who believes naively that if a man says he loves her he must mean it and lives to be disabused of her belief and abused in most other ways. There's a nice twist on the cuckolded husband who traditionally takes a weapon to his wife's lover; here, disturbing a tryst in a portable bathing hut the wronged spouse simply wheels it to the cliff-top and sends it to where it will do the most good. All this is roughly half of what Maupassant wrote and Astruc has chosen to end it there and omit the story of the heroine's son. As it stands it is a fine piece of story telling.
Arguably the photography gets the lion's share of the plaudits. Muted colour and time after time a grouping that suggests Renoir or other Impressionists. Somewhat bizarrely the music at times - notably the opening which is a sort of reverse Sound Of Music with a young girl running through a meadow but AWAY from the camera rather than towards it - seems to fight the lyricism sounding almost martial rather than melodic. Maria Schell was tailor made for the role of the young, idealistic girl who believes naively that if a man says he loves her he must mean it and lives to be disabused of her belief and abused in most other ways. There's a nice twist on the cuckolded husband who traditionally takes a weapon to his wife's lover; here, disturbing a tryst in a portable bathing hut the wronged spouse simply wheels it to the cliff-top and sends it to where it will do the most good. All this is roughly half of what Maupassant wrote and Astruc has chosen to end it there and omit the story of the heroine's son. As it stands it is a fine piece of story telling.