Jean Stelli was yet one more journeyman director who racked up a creditable number of domestic films but never really made a noise Internationally. Here he teams up with a similar journeyman screenwriter in the shape of Francoise Giroud whose most prestigious credit was as 'third' writer on Jacques Becker's Antoine et Antoinette. The mediocre of course are always at their best and so it is here; run-of-the-mill melodrama with no surprises, no new 'angle', just a plodding story doing its damnedest to get from A to B without scaring the horses. For me at least one name jumped out of the credits, that of the wonderful Suzanne Flon and she at least didn't disappoint, but then when did she ever. Jean Moreau was also on hand a good decade ahead of the new wavelet with which she is unaccountably associated whilst top billing goes to Annabella, so hopelessly outclassed by Arletty in Hotel du Nord, who compensated for the humiliation by marrying Tyrone Power (let's see you eclipse THAT, Arletty) and was now newly divorced and back in France. Of its type it's no worse than several, as good as many but BETTER than none.
Review of Dernier amour
