Le Rideau Cramoisi = the Crimson Curtain

A young officer is billeted with a bourgeois couple with a beautiful daughter. To his astonishment, the girl makes advances to him and they embark on a silent nocturnal affair, carried out with some difficulty since her bedroom leads off that of her parents. The intrigue culminates in a surprise tragic ending. Astruc, novelist and film critic, who coined the phrase ‘camera stylo’, wrote that cinema should be ‘a means of writing s supple and as subtle as that of written language’. In this, his first film, the direcor practised what he preached, achieving a stylish, unusual and moving work in which narative takes the place of dialogu and the camera and silent presences of the actors convey the drama. This little gem of a short feature, demonstrating the maximum that less is more, remains the best work of Astruc, whose later films, tend towards the turgid and lack clarity of purpose. Reference: Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide.

Credits: Producers, Anatole Dauman, Philippe Lifschitz ; director, Alexandre Astruc ; writer, Alexandre Astruc ; photography, Eugene Schuftan ; music, Jean-Jacques Grunenenwald.
Cast: Anouk Aimee, Jean-Claude Pascal, Marguerite Garcya.