A film that is slow, subtle, inconclusive. For life moves slowly, is full of subtleties which escape us, and fails to offer neat conclusions.
Shot in black and white in an authentic corner of Paris (including the huge Renault factory since demolished) populated by typical locals, it is a work of intricate art dealing with universal themes.
How can Europeans who lived through the traumas of World War 2 forget them? If your husband was captured and tortured by the Gestapo and then disappeared into a concentration camp, how can you have a normal life? After fifteen years Thérèse has not remarried and keeps her lover at arm's length: could her husband one day return from the dead? By intuition she might recognise him, but would he recognise her? While they could obviously not pick up where they left off, could they even pick up at all?
So begins the slow game in which Thérèse tries to make the amnesiac tramp recognise and accept her. A soundtrack of beautiful evocative music adds richness and feeling to the deep emotions the two characters are undergoing.
PS Similar themes can be found in two French postwar novels: "D'entre les morts" (1954) that was transposed to San Francisco for the immortal film "Vertigo" of 1958, and "Le retour des cendres" (1961) which was less successfully made into "Return from the Ashes" in 1965.
