Muriel or The Time of Return
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Muriel or The Time of Return |
| Original title | Muriel ou le Temps d'un back |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1963 |
| length | 105 (German version) 117 (French version) minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alain Resnais |
| script | Jean Cayrol |
| production | Anatole Dauman for Argos-Alpha-Dear |
| music | Hans Werner Henze |
| camera | Sacha Vierny |
| cut |
Kenout Peltier Eric Pluet |
| occupation | |
| |
Muriel or The Time of Return is a French feature film from 1963 directed by Alain Resnais . It is about remembering and forgetting in the relationships between four people in a northern French port city, but also about illusions, lies and trauma. The initial situation: Hélène wants to reconnect with her former lover Alphonse. Her stepson, ex-soldier Bernard, suffers greatly from the memory of the Arab girl Muriel, whom he saw die in the Algerian war.
action
Boulogne-sur-Mer on the French Atlantic coast in November 1962. The widowed Hélène Aughain runs an antique shop specializing in furniture in her apartment. There are price tags hanging on the items everywhere. Everything in their living environment seems random and provisional, as if their private surroundings reflect the disorder and deep uncertainty of their own existence. Hélène lives in this full house with her stepson Bernard, who has been obsessed with the memory of a certain Muriel since his return from the Algerian war . Hélène's own existence, in turn, is determined by the unresolved memories of Alphonse, her first and at the same time only true love, which ended as casually as it once began.
Hélène has decided not to let memories of the past rule her life today. And so she decides after twenty years to see her lost childhood sweetheart again for the first time. She has invited Alphonse and is driving to the train station to pick him up. What will the first meeting be like after such a long time? Will the expectations be disappointed, will the time of inexplicable sadness, inner loneliness and melancholy finally come to an end, will the demons of the past disappear as a result? The first look - the first shock: Alphonse does not come alone. He travels with the young Françoise, whom he introduces as his niece, and lodges with her in Hélène's apartment. The reunion of the two ex-lovers turns out to be completely different from the start than in Hélène's dreams. The greeting shows embarrassment, not warmth. Should you be using you? Uncertainty everywhere, refined politeness prevails over closeness and the joy of seeing each other again. Helene tries helplessly to be a good hostess. The conversations seem stilted. The time of return becomes more and more a disappointment, hopes quickly burst and prove to be illusions.
Bernard is the only person Hélène has allowed closeness to since her husband's death. But his engagement in the Algerian war changed him a lot and gradually led to estrangement from his stepmother. Back in civil life, Bernard has not found the connection to life at home. Day after day he wanders the streets of the city for hours, only armed with a camera that he carries as if it were his rifle from the war. Bernard is the first to see through Alphonses life lies. He says he lived in Algeria for a long time and worked there as the manager of an exclusive club. But Alphonses enthusiastic stories resemble postcard motifs and have nothing to do with the reality that Bernard experienced in battle. He frightens Alphonse with a scorpion that he carries with him. This is his Algeria.
After a meal together, Bernard and Françoise go on a stroll through the city. The young woman confesses Alphonses first lie about her as his alleged niece. In truth, she was his lover. Bernard tells about his girlfriend Marie-Do, whom he wants to visit that evening. Harmless chatter everywhere - in truth, the two young people have just as little to say to each other as Hélène and Alphonse. But at least they recognize their strangeness and do not pretend more than they actually are. At the same time, Hélène and Alphonse torment themselves through a fruitless coming to terms with the past that does not really touch the core issues. Did they ever make love at all? And was Hélène's obsession with the memory of a supposedly great love for Alphonse nothing more than an attempt to not allow the present, the here and now? It gradually dawns on Hélène that Alphonse is a gossip and a boor. For the first time she questions her memories.
It is almost like a relief when Hélène's current partner, Roland de Smoke, comes by to pick her up. De Smoke is the complete opposite of Alphonse: He lives in the here and now, is a successful demolition entrepreneur, serious and cultured - even if he is not Hélène's great love. While the couple leave, Alphonse is left alone. He searches Hélène's apartment to look for clues in the past. Who is Hélène anyway? But even after this rummaging, his childhood love remains alien to him. In papers concerning Bernard, he comes across the name Muriel. This young Arab girl is Bernard's secret - she died during a combat mission in Algeria.
These are the demons who torment Bernard. Is he complicit in Muriel's death? The girl was captured, tortured and finally murdered by her comrade Robert. Robert has set up a studio on the outskirts of the city in which he tries to reconstruct her terrible end, the crime committed against her, with the help of photos, tapes and amateur films. The recordings made by Bernard are blurry and not very meaningful, but the statements made at the same time by the amateur film soldier Bernard are all the more so. They reveal what has been bothering the young man since then. This death changed Bernard profoundly; it is no longer possible for him to feel like a peaceful citizen. His ability to relate has also suffered. Although he cares a lot about dear Marie-Do, he is unable to ask her to stay when she announces that she wants to go abroad for a while.
When Alphonses brother-in-law Ernest comes to town, things start moving. Ernest is looking for Alphonse, wants him to come back to Paris, to his wife (Simone) and Herd. Alphonse wants to avoid this unpleasant encounter, but fears that the brother-in-law will soon turn up at Hélène's. At the big farewell dinner that Hélène gives him and his “niece” in honor, the guests are already sitting on their suitcases. The mood is of a convulsive looseness that borders on hysteria. There is something spurious about the forgiveness in the air. When Ernest arrives, the lies of life break open: Ernest calls his brother-in-law a babbler and impostor. There are fistfights, and Bernard with relish pulls out his camera, which is always at hand, and records everything. Françoise comes along with the tape and accidentally presses the wrong button. A harsh scream that promises death is heard.
Bernard runs out of the room crying, shocked. It was Muriel's voice. In shock, he goes to Robert, the torturer of yore, and shoots him. Then Bernard throws his camera into the sea and blows up his studio, his shrine of monstrous memories. Bernard flees, Hélène can't stop him. Alphonse also runs away. He gets on a bus going to Brussels - just get away from here. Hélène searches in vain for him at the train station. She remains a little helpless and a little later goes to her friend Angèle, a seamstress. She finds solace in this amiable, simple woman - but only temporarily, her problems remain. In the end, Alphone's wife Simone, who has just arrived from Paris, wanders through Hélène's deserted apartment, calling out her husband's name. The end of all self-deception has come.
Many new questions remain for all four central protagonists; their previous existences became fields of rubble, the cemetery of their illusions. But at least: the lies of life have been broken and all lives are clearly mixed up for their own good.
Production notes
The film was shot from November 1962 and finished in January 1963 in the studios of the Paris suburb of Epinay. The premiere was on October 3, 1963, in Germany Muriel started on October 9, 1963.
Jacques Saulnier created the buildings, Rita Streich did the singing .
Director Resnais himself called Muriel “a love story from our time” and added: “It is not the course of the action that counts, the feelings and reflections of those involved are decisive”.
Reviews
“With Muriel , Alain Resnais is now returning to reality. [...] When asked whether one should see Hélène, the main character of the film, in the antiques dealer, perhaps a Marianne 63, a typical French woman of our day, Resnais replied with an almost apologetic gesture: 'This vastness and uncertainty of feelings, you can find it today in Italy or in Germany. They are Western reactions. ' For Resnais, the concrete case as well as the concrete place only becomes interesting because of its general validity, and this general validity is not limited by any national borders, at least in Western Europe. We said that while Muriel was the consistent follow-up of the ongoing Resnais theme, it was enriched with decisive topical accents. And this, above all, distinguishes Muriel from earlier works: For the first time, Resnais no longer just asks us to be open to memory. He examines the self-understanding of the people on the conservative behavior of a petty bourgeois who has become insecure, whose look back threatens to become self-deception and a romantic escape from the commitment of the moment. "
Reclam's film guide writes that the reflections of those involved “all show that the protagonists are not at home in the present. A visual signal: Hélène's apartment, which she also uses as a 'warehouse', is crammed with antiques, some of which have already been sold and some of which are still marked with price tags. So Hélène is looking for a destination in a long-forgotten love that may never have existed as she would like to believe. Conversely, for Bernard the past is a burden that he tries to kill. Alphonse finally invents a past to excuse his failure in the present. Resnais used these motifs to create an ingenious network that 'captures' the viewer. The action of the film is fragmentary, fragmented, like scraps of a memory ”.
David Thomson writes in A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema : “ Muriel (63, Resnais) went beyond exercise and allowed Seyrig to create one of the most anguished and tender of screen women. As Jean Cayrol's notes for the script make clean, the part of Hélène was an embodiment of past, present and future, a crucible of experience. Seyrig astonishingly altered herself to fit these requirements: 'Hélènes figure is still young, but her face must be very mobile. In fact, she could pass for a slightly used 20-year-old or a 45-year-old on whom worry and fatigue have left their marks. She has kept her hair natural and untinted. And the wind can play in her hair continually, which will give it a life of its own, like the changes in her face. '"
On critic.de it says: “After last year in Marienbad ( L'année dernière à Marienbad , 1961), which seems to completely dissolve the reality principle and space-time structures, Muriel at first glance looks almost like a conventional narrative. The action takes place in a specific and identifiable place and is subject to an obvious chronology, the protagonists are provided with a biography and a comprehensible psychology. You are all victims of trauma. Hélène never really got over the grief over her lost childhood love. Bernard brings with him the trauma of an unwilling perpetrator from the Algerian war. Finally, the collective trauma of World War II hovers over the plot. There are the war stories that the characters tell about lost acquaintances. And there are the pictures of Boulogne-sur-Mer: bullet points on street signs and half-grown ruined houses next to newly erected new buildings, scars and poorly healing wounds of a city without a past. Towards the end of the Second World War, the fishing village lost entire districts in the German and Allied bombings. "
The lexicon of international films says: “Alain Resnais' first color film minutely interweaves the web of deceptions in which three people have become entangled in order to escape the demands of reality. A masterful description of the consciousness of people who believe that they can accommodate themselves with half-truths and self-deception. "
Awards
Leading actress Delphine Seyrig was awarded the Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival . Director Resnais was nominated for the Golden Lion .
The film received the Sutherland Trophy at the British Film Institute Awards in 1963 .
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
synchronization
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Hélène | Delphine Seyrig | Ruth Maria Kubitschek |
| Alphonse | Jean-Pierre Kerien | Alf Marholm |
| Bernard | Jean-Baptiste Thierée | Peter Thom |
| Françoise | Nita Klein | Cordula Trantow |
| Roland de Smoke | Claude Sainval | Gerhard Frickhöffer |
| Claudie | Laurence Badie | Dinah Hinz |
| Marie-Thu | Martine Vatel | Uschi Wolff |
| Ernest | Jean Champion | Carl-Heinz Schroth |
Web links
- Muriel, or The Time of Return in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Atlas Filmheft 30: Essay Alain Resnais - an author without an example . 1963.
- ^ Dieter Krusche, Jürgen Labenski (collaboration): Reclams film guide . Stuttgart 1973, p. 426.
- ^ David Thomson: A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema . Plug & Warburg, London 1975, p. 516.
- ↑ Translation: “ Muriel (63, Resnais) went beyond a style exercise and allowed Seyrig to create one of the most tormented and tender of all women in film. As Jean Cayrol's script notes reveal, the role of Hélène was to become the epitome of past, present and future, a melting pot of experiences. Seyrig transformed quite astonishingly in order to meet these requirements: 'Hélène's figure is still young, but her face must be very versatile. In fact, she could pass as an easily spent 20-year-old or as a 45-year-old in whom worry and exhaustion have left their mark. She wears her hair naturally and untinted. And the wind can play around in her hair all the time, giving it a life of its own like the changes in her face. '"
- ↑ Muriel on critic.de
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films , Volume 5, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, p. 2680.