Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

Cool and introspective, Otto Preminger's sleek, stylish Bonjour Tristesse is one of his most understated films. Jean Seberg stars as a spoiled teenager who acts with a high-society sophistication beyond her years, and dapper David Niven is her playboy father, going through young female playmates like socks. Flitting through the French jet set and comparing conquests, they summer on the gorgeous French Riviera, where mature fashion designer Deborah Kerr enters their lives and wins Niven's heart. Seeing an end to her lifestyle, Seberg plots an end to the relationship with equal parts conniving ruthlessness and juvenile prankishness, too self-absorbed to even consider the brutal results of her actions. Told in flashback from a sleek but shadowy black-and-white Paris, the film melts into the vivid Technicolor of memory. Seberg's voiceover narration is arch, but her impish, often petulant performance is perfect, as is Niven's flippant, womanizing bachelor father (Preminger lets their curious, flirtatious intimacy hang like an unanswered question and a nervous subtext). Kerr's middle-aged working woman seems almost puritanical compared to the irrepressible travelers, but under her rules and limits lies an honest concern for a "child" who believes herself an adult. Preminger's camera prowls through the drama just removed enough to be respectful, and intimate enough to get under the characters' skin. Like the best of his dramas, there are no heroes or villains, only complex, flawed, achingly sympathetic characters. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com essential video

OTTO PREMINGER, OPUS 24

****1/2 1958. this film was based on Françoise Sagan bestseller Bonjour Tristesse: A Novel (P.S.) and was produced and directed by Otto Preminger. A wealthy playboy and his seventeen years old daughter Cécile live an insouciant life. They are spending the summer on the French Riviera when one of Raymond's old friend Anne comes to their house near the sea. Cécile imagines a scheme to get rid of the intruder when Raymond decides to marry Anne. Preminger chose two actors who already worked for him, David The Moon Is Blue [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - France ] Niven and Jean Saint Joan [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - France ] Seberg in order to give life to Sagan's characters. And they are superb in these roles. With the sublime Deborah Kerr as Anne the intruder, our pleasure is complete. Also note the titles by Saul Bass, the song BONJOUR TRISTESSE sung by the French icon Juliette Gréco and the smart idea to film the flashbacks in color and the present in black & white. Highly recommended. July 6, 2008

Oh....ick...

Big disappointment...an insincere, uninteresting, overly long, mis-cast, under-acted, under-written, and essentially uninteresting story about some smarmy, rich, child-like people who cannot grow up or find real happiness or meaning in their lives, and, worse, don't want to!
So...ick. Go watch a good western or horror flick instead. July 6, 2008

'Whoops'

Would've been more captivating had it been the first time I'd seen this kind of movie, but it wasn't. Technical aspects held my interest -- especially the cinematography; the use of black and white for the present and color for flashbacks was effective. The performances were okay. Jean Seberg is easy on the eyes. Her real life story is more interesting than any of her film roles. It's an inkblot. April 11, 2008

good product, not delivered on time

Product is good. Not delivered on intended date. I paid extra for quick arrival, but it did not arrive as stated. Disappointing. Will consider this the next time I order anything on here again (if I do order anything). January 19, 2008

Alors!

Some Bad Movies demand a response in the French style - every few minutes, you'll find yourself striking your hand to your forehead while shrieking, "Alors!" Just such a choice pastry is Otto Preminger's 1958 film version of Francoise Sagan's novel Bonjour Tristesse (which means, more or less, "Hello, sadness"), the filmmaker's second, and final, attempt to turn Jean Seberg into a star - they'd bombed a year before with Saint Joan. Pert, perky and as American as apple pie, Seberg was perhaps the last actress who could pass for an amoral, Parisian teen temptress whose incestuous feelings for her aging roue father - she calls him, ahem, "darling" - spell doom for anyone he seriously gets involved with.

The beginning of this howler, set in the "present," is shot--meaningfully - in black and white, the better to capture the stark ennui of Seberg's poor-little-rich-girl life. Out on the dance floor in a chic Paris boite, Seberg stares moonily into a camera and tells us in voice-over, "I can't feel anything...it isn't the same anymore. Nothing is." Sure, you've guessed that Seberg will also mutter, "Will I ever be happy again as I was at the beginning of that wonderful summer on the Riviera?" thereby cueing a flashback - shot, meaningfully, in color - but no one could anticipate that before this occurs, starlet Juliette Greco turns up to croak out the film's fall-down-funny title tune: "The street I walk is sadness/My house has no address/The letters that I write me/ Begin 'Bonjour, tristesse.'"

Alors!

Summering sinfully in a villa with her rich daddy-o (David Niven) and his mistress-of-the-moment (Mylene Demongeot), Seberg trills dialogue like, "Wait! Let's smell the day!" so sunnily she seems to have traipsed in from a Gidget movie. Into this cozy triangle wanders Givenchy-clad Deborah Kerr, who, as the world's foremost fashion designer, inexplicably has marital designs on womanizing, good-for-nothing Niven. In no time, Niven's romancing Kerr ("I've never wanted any woman the way I want you"). Demongeot hits the road ("I will not be treated like a wife!") and Seberg is forced to explain to us how she feels ("Part of me was angry, part of me was happy, all of me was excited"), since she's utterly unable to register any emotion on her blank face.

When Niven and Kerr start sleeping together, then announce they're engaged, Seberg is so jealous of Kerr - about whom she gushes, "She looks softer, moves easier... I wish I walked the way she walks now" - she literally jumps Geoffrey Horne, the hunky male starlet next door. Then, when Kerr reprimands her - "You should realize such diversions can end up in a hospital!" - Seberg goes bonkers at the notion of losing Niven and gaining a stepmother-cum-truant officer, and begins to plan Kerr's heave-ho. After sticking voodoo pins into her doll, Seberg tells us, on the soundtrack, "I actually spent days comparing the contestants for my father," while she chalks up a blackboard comparison of herself and Kerr in such categories as "Fun," "Chic," "Possessiveness" and "Flirting." (Tellingly, Seberg doesn't put "Acting" on the board.) Just in case we think she doesn't deserve to get dumped, Kerr suddenly gets prissy, denouncing Niven's alcoholic pals: "In the end, their only memories will be of hangovers!" Then, Seberg seduces Horne into feigning a romance with Demongeot, which - oh, don't ask - provokes Kerr into driving off a cliff into the sea.

Alors!

Back in the black-and-white "present," Seberg confides that she and Niven "have an unspoken agreement to never mention last summer" -- the very deal, we'd guess, they cut after finishing this film. August 10, 2007

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