University of Virginia Library

Uneasy 'Rider'

By Steve Wells
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

The best thing that can be said
about Rene Clement's suspense
intrigue, "Rider on the Rain," is
that it is an improvement over
"Sudden Terror," the intolerably
inept film of the same genre which
it unexpectedly supplanted at the
University Theatre on Sunday.
This, admittedly, is a rather
nebulous statement, which is
perhaps appropriate inasmuch as
"Rider on the Rain" is a rather
nebulous mystery yarn.

In the first twenty minutes of
the film, director Clement and
screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot
succeed in inducing an element of
terror and seizing our interest by
presenting mysterious characters
whose actions raise questions in our
minds. The title character, a
suspicious looking stranger, appears
on the scene and proceeds to follow
a French housewife wherever she
goes, eventually gaining entrance to
her bedroom and raping her. She
starts to phone the police, then
stops. She finds he is still in the
house and shoots him, after which
she disposes of the body.

Who was this man? Was there a
link between them? The following
day another mysterious stranger
arrives to taunt her and try to make
her confess to the killing. Who is
he? Sooner or later, all of these
questions are answered except the
most crucial one: why won't she go
to the police? The fact that she
subjects herself to so much abuse
when the killing was justifiable is
illogical. And we soon become
aware that there are no secrets in
her past which prevent her from
going to the law.

In a film of this type, the keys
to the final answer, the steps
toward resolution, must be
presented very clearly and very
carefully. In "Rider on the Rain,"
each new piece of knowledge
imparted to the viewer only
thickens the haze that encompasses
the situation. It wasn't until I was
out of the theatre that I was able to
make any real sense out of the
succession of events, and in any
mystery, that is too late — getting
there is all the fun.

The cast is not terribly
impressive, but then the script is
often unfair to them. Charles
Bronson tries to be cool as the
persistent persecutor, but really
isn't. As the woman, Marlene
Jobert looks like a fallen sparrow,
but her acting ability comes closer
to that of a dead canary. Of all the
characters, I liked the rider on the
rain most, perhaps because he has
no lines and departs first.