Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 16
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 1,464
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Movie Info
Francoise Sagan's bittersweet novel Bonjour Tristesse is given a sumptuous Riviera-filmed screen treatment. David Niven plays a wealthy playboy, the father of teenaged libertine-in-the-making Jean Seberg. Seberg tolerates most of her father's mistresses, but doesn't know what to make of the prudish Deborah Kerr, who will not cohabit with Niven until after they're married. Feeling that her own relation with her father will be disrupted by Kerr's presence, Seberg does her malicious best to break
Jan 1, 1958 Wide
Dec 16, 2003
Sony Pictures Entertainment
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Cast
-
Deborah Kerr
Anne Larsen -
David Niven
Raymond -
Jean Seberg
Cecile -
Mylène Demongeot
Elsa Mackenbourg -
Geoffrey Horne
Philippe -
Juliette Greco
Night Club Singer -
Walter Chiari
Pablo -
Martita Hunt
Philippe's Mother -
Jean Kent
Mrs. Lombard -
David Oxley
Jacques -
Elga Andersen
Denise -
Jeremy Burnham
Hubert Duclos -
Roland Culver
Mr. Lombard -
Tutte Lemkow
Pierre Schube
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All Critics (16) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (3) | DVD (6)
Niven and Kerr keenly satirize their onscreen iconographies-the cad and the goody-goody, respectively-but it's Seberg who cuts deepest.
Otto Preminger's formally dazzling 1958 film is an edifice constructed of contrasts.
Script deficiencies and awkward reading -- some lines are spoken as though just that -- have static results.
The flirtation with incest at the centre of this adaptation of Françoise Sagan's novel is tame by modern standards, but the evil scheming of Seberg as the daughter set on separating her father and his mistress is still forceful.
Top CriticA bomb.
Arguably, this is Preminger's masterpiece.
...palpably overlong...
Misunderstood at the time and still underappreciated, this 1958 glossy melodrama improves on Sagan's French novella, displaying Preminger's best qualities as auteur, moral ambiguity, detached, nonjudgmental approach, not to mention smooth visuals.
Has a glacial tone that gets covered with a lobster red French Riviera sunburn.
Kerr, of course, is a standout talent in spite of script deficiencies, and Demongeot plays the role of a silly blonde well. The Riviera scenes are rich in eye appeal and Kerr's chic costuming by Givenchy adds another plus.
While some may be put off by Preminger's glossy presentation of the idle rich, his direction in Bonjour Tristesse engages the mind while it stimulates the senses.
Among favorite cinephile pet auteurs, no one's reputation has had a rougher ride than that of Otto Preminger's.
For cinephiles, the career of Preminger is their oyster. Bonjour Tristesse is the pearl.
he overall ambiguity of the film and its refusal to make judgements mark it as ahead of its time, while the cast are first-rate, particularly Seberg, veering between impishly mischievous and spookily sinister.
Hollywood soap opera at its best, nicely done and still entertaining after many decades.
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Foreign Titles
- Buenos días, tristeza (ES)
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]Made in 1958, "Bonjour Tristesse" is clearly ten years ahead of its time but we are still only in 1968. In the interim, the movie has not aged well and could have definitely used more of an edge. It chronicles a time when it was becoming hip that parents could be hip but wonders at what cost?(These are noble sentiments which are unnecessarily voiced by the characters themselves.) Raymond has been a spectacularly bad role model for Cecile but Anne shows promise as she is herself a successful fashion designer who wants Cecile to study for her exams.(I do believe in parental responsibility but not societal responsibility.) Cecile has other ideas, simply wanting to play in the moment and be supported by men in the future. [/font]