Rene Clement - Le passager de la pluie aka Rider on the Rain (1970)

A beautiful young woman in the South of France is stalked by, then raped by, a mysterious masked assailant. She shoots him dead soon afterwards and dumps his corpse in the sea. Later, an American investigator turns up, and to her horror he seems to know everything about what she has done.





A young woman who watches a stranger get off a bus in the pouring rain, soon finds out she's being stalked by that exact man. When at home, the man breaks into her house (as her husband is away) and rapes her. Later on after the ordeal the man still happens to be the house, but she grabs a shotgun and shoots him. Where she would dump the body into the ocean. Then suddenly another man appears on the scene named Harry Dobbs, who goes out of the way to try to convince the young woman she committed a murder without giving too much away.

This tightly handled low-budget French / Italian co-production is an improbable, but an oddly bold and stimulating teaser that seems straight forward at first, then suddenly it leads you down many knotty paths (with Hitchcock shades) before breaking out the truth of the matter. It's a real curiously acute piece (adapted from a novel) by director Rene Clement, who gets interestingly respectable performances out of very fitting Charles Bronson (whose character is a hard one to figure out) and Marlene Jobert adding some innocent starch to her role. The film / story really do draw from these two performances in dissecting the character's formal makeup and inner workings in how they play a big part to the scheme of things. It's hard to tell the lingering intentions behind the bigger picture, as it becomes exhaustingly confounding in its investigative details and suggestive developments. The productively sharp script is thoroughly meticulous in disguising the truth; as barriers are broken to only go on to create new scenarios and leads.

Stark, moody atmospherics lend well to Clement's leeringly grounded, subdued style where it really breathes of a quiet intensity to its continuously building psychological framework and dour visuals within its slow-going nature. The gloomy opening stages really do build upon a creepy ambiance, which pulls you in and the score is sparsely used, but has a dramatic sting. The performances outside the central turns are finely tailored with the likes of Annie Cordy, Ellen Bahl, Jean Gaven, Steve Eckardt and Jill Ireland in one her first roles starring alongside Bronson. (IMDB comment)







El pasajero de la lluvia
Una mujer (Marlene Jobert) es acechada por un extraño durante una lluviosa tarde, que se introduce en su casa y la viola, mientras el marido está fuera. Posteriormente le dispara a su asaltante y lo mata, arrojando su cuerpo al mar. Cuando el cuerpo aparece, un militar norteamericano (Charles Bronson) acusa a la mujer de asesinato y de robo del dinero que el violador tenía consigo.







Un soir, un inconnu surprend Mélancolie Mau seule chez elle et la viole. Folle de terreur, elle le tue et se débarrasse du cadavre. Mais peu de temps après, un mystérieux Américain la harcèle de questions. Refusant d'avouer le meurtre, elle se retrouve alors impliquée dans une lutte sans merci avec son inquisiteur...









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