RETOUR A L‘AUBE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 434, 17 October 1947, Page 31

RETOUR A L‘AUBE

(Pathe Cinema)

‘THIS, you feel, as the story opens up on a scene of a Hungarian peasant wedding, with .shots of pretty girls dancing about in cav cos-

tumes, with Danielle" Darrieux in the centre the prettiest of them all, with mobile photography, rhythmic editing, and a swirling background of music to give an effect of speed and light-hearted-ness-this, you feel, is going to be one of those pleasant, Continental musicalcomedies which have great elegance of style if not very much substance. And when the scene changes to a small Hungarian railway-station where La Darrieux, now married unromantically to the safe and rather stodgy station-master, watches the big expresses roar through on their way to Budapest (clatter of rails, shriek of whistle, montage shots of scattering ducks, whirling wheels, bannering smoke against the sky), and dreams about what lies at journey’s end, your first impression is strengthened. But a surprise is in store, and I am not sure that it is altogether an agreeable one. For Retour a L’Aube (Return at Dawn) which started out so full of gaiety, music, and insousiance, comes finaily to rest bowed down with: melogore and tragedy. The producer seems 1 to have been inspired by an ambition ~- to cram every emotion known to the filmgoer into this one film-possibly in order to demonstrate the versatility of Danielle Darrieux as an actress. There is no doubt that she is a very beautiful girl and that her performing range is considerable (this film was made in the days before Hollywood got hold of her and instructed us to pronounce her name as "Dare You"), but one can’t help wishing, both for her sake and that of the film, that the narrative had been more adequately sign-posted. As it is, the emotional switches are so rapid that the

narrative sometimes runs off the rails. I found it difficult to know exactly when the comic motif (country girl on spree in big city) had ceased and been replaced by pathos, leading from there (with the appearance of a philandering confidence man) to melodrama, murder, mystery, frenzied tragedy, and finally the heroine’s return at dawn, with a heavy: load on her conscience, to her native village. Individual portions of the film are excellent, and the whole thing is very far from being unbearable. But remembering Danielle Darrieux as she was in Mayerling, I doubt if she shows up to best advantage as the star of this kind of emotional quick-change act.