Bonjour Tristesse

Starring:Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Jean Seberg, MylÃ¨ne Demongeot, Geoffrey Horne, Juliette GrÃ©co, Walter Chiari, Martita Hunt, Roland Culver, Jean Kent, David Oxley, Elga Andersen, Jeremy Burnham, Eveline Eyfel, Tutte Lemkow, Maryse Martin
Director: Otto Preminger
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

Cool and introspective, Otto Preminger's sleek, stylish Bonjour Tristesse is one of his most understated films. Jean Seberg stars as a spoiled teenager who acts with a high-society sophistication beyond her years, and dapper David Niven is her playboy father, going through young female playmates like socks. Flitting through the French jet set and comparing conquests, they summer on the gorgeous French Riviera, where mature fashion designer Deborah Kerr enters their lives and wins Niven's heart. Seeing an end to her lifestyle, Seberg plots an end to the relationship with equal parts conniving ruthlessness and juvenile prankishness, too self-absorbed to even consider the brutal results of her actions. Told in flashback from a sleek but shadowy black-and-white Paris, the film melts into the vivid Technicolor of memory. Seberg's voiceover narration is arch, but her impish, often petulant performance is perfect, as is Niven's flippant, womanizing bachelor father (Preminger lets their curious, flirtatious intimacy hang like an unanswered question and a nervous subtext). Kerr's middle-aged working woman seems almost puritanical compared to the irrepressible travelers, but under her rules and limits lies an honest concern for a "child" who believes herself an adult. Preminger's camera prowls through the drama just removed enough to be respectful, and intimate enough to get under the characters' skin. Like the best of his dramas, there are no heroes or villains, only complex, flawed, achingly sympathetic characters. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews:

sometimes , there are no happy endings..........2007-07-02

BONJOUR TRISTESSE (1958), based on the infamous bestseller by teenager Francoise Sagan, captures the early trends of French new-wave cinema. Even today, this film still holds up beautifully thanks to it's progressive themes and top-flight performances.

The story is told in flashback. Cecile (Jean Seberg) and her widower father Raymond (David Niven) spend their summers in idyllic bliss on the sun-soaked French Riviera. Their relationship is open; Cecile can trust her father to allow her all the freedom she wishes to enjoy the opposite sex, and vice-versa. All that changes when Cecile's stern godmother Anne (Deborah Kerr) arrives to spend the holidays. Anne wants Cecile to start seriously preparing for her future, Cecile would rather run wild with her latest boyfriend Philippe (Geoffrey Horne). When Raymond announces his plans to marry Anne, Cecile sets into motion a plan that will trigger untold tragedy for them all...

Francoise Sagan's semi-autobiographical book was always going to be an ideal film, and producer/director Otto Preminger's 1958 movie still hits the right mark. The lives of the moneyed (and mindless) on the Riviera coast, their nasty manipulations, and what happens when a woman tries to change the destructive relationship between a father and daughter, is truly fascinating.

The cast is sensational. Jean Seberg, with her unique combination of willowy European grace and all-American charm, is the ideal choice for Cecile. Deborah Kerr's performance as Anne walks the fine line between comedy and drama; and David Niven's performance as Raymond is equally fine (Kerr and Niven had co-starred in "Separate Tables" the same year).

The supporting cast is very strong too. Mylene Demongeot steals many a scene as the feather-brained Elsa, Martita Hunt has an all-too-brief bit as Philippe's mother; the cast also features Walter Chiari, Juliette Greco (as the nightclub singer who performs the Title Song), and Roland Culver.

BONJOUR TRISTESSE is a fabulous film, from it's moody B&W sections to it's sombre ending. Especially for fans of the tragic Jean Seberg (one of the many casualties of the Hollywood machine), this film will be a must-see.

The DVD from Columbia includes a sparkling new 16:9 anamorphic enhanced print. Extras are limited to the trailer, plus previews for "From Here to Eternity" and "The Age of Innocence". (Single-sided, single-layer disc).

Beautiful Jean Seberg.......2007-02-12

Frivolous, adolescent story on the Riviera. But that is precisely what it is supposed to be, filled with great scenery and playful antics. What a tragic loss (Jean) to the whole world. We sometimes forget that butterflies are just as fragile as they are beautiful.

Bonjour Tristesse DVD.......2007-01-09

I enjoyed this DVD with Jean Seberg. It is an older movie with a contemporary currency; it is hilariously funny, stylish and worthwhile.

Seberg: The Haunted Pixie.......2005-06-28

For my money, "Bonjour Tristesse" is the best and most watchable example of Jean Seberg's film work, and that includes "Breathless". For one, a large part of her appeal is her physcial beauty, and "Bonjour" doesn't scimp on closeups or miss an opportunity to fill the screen with that incredible face, giving viewers delicious eyeful after eyeful of Jean

Directer Otto Preminger's direction is also sensitive to her appeal; in fact the whole film appears to have been written especially to showcase her unique charm as a sort of haunted pixie.

Deborah Kerr is excellent as the rather repressed love interest of David Niven, who is also pitch-perfect as Jean's philandering father. I won't give away the plot other than to say that it is a stylish and crisply told seeming light-comedy that suddenly takes a sharp turn into drama that is highly effective, and even a little shocking. Very modern sexual themes here for it's time, too.

If you only own one Seberg film, make it "Bonjour Tristesse". It's highly watchable from start to finish, stands up under repeated viewings, is gorgeously filmed, a perfect time capsule of when the rigid standards and fashions of the fifties were beginning to give way to the beatnick sixties, and captures Jean at her peak of youthful, enigmatic and mysterious beauty.

Charming story with a good twist in the end.......2005-01-07

I read the novel well over thirty years ago, in Europe, when I was fifteen, but did not get to watch the movie until tonight. I wanted to see it for a sit-down stroll through memory lane, and never expected to be touched by the story and its morale. You see, when I first read the novel, I did not care about it; I was then a fifteen-year old who was dealing with a much harsher existence than the seventeen-year old Cecile's (marvelously portrayed by Jean Seberg), who had the freedom and the money to drive her own car, to smoke, to dance, and hobnob between Paris and the French Riviera with her soft-hearted, caring, and still a child-at-heart, dad. Thus her poor little rich girl's woes, primarily consisting of keeping her dad's love to herself, was boring as well as infuriating. I realize now that I got to read the novel again to reexperience the characters in the manner originally presented by Francoise Sagan.
From the film version I watched tonight, I did not get the sense that it's >>>an accurate account of the empty, amoral, flamboyant and insensitive life in the French "high-life" during the late 50's/early 60's. < < <<
The core of the story is a father (debonair David Niven) and teenage daughter (beautiful imp, Jean Seberg), who lead charming lives and have the good fortune of being each other's friend and confidante. I can't recall a reference as to the manner of the mother's death (re-reading the novel ought to help in that), but neither the father nor the daughter seem to mourn her loss. However one may easily surmise that the father's affectionate and tolerant treatment of his daughter is his way of filling the void of a mother in her life. Although a charming and prolific playboy, he always makes sure that his daughter knows she is number one in his heart, and Cecile never feels threatened by any of his short-lived paramours.

So, on that fateful summer, father and daughter land on the French Riviera for their customary fun-filled R & R. But then a dark cloud appears on Cecile's sunny skies: Anne (portrayed by Deborah Kerr), beautiful, intelligent, elegant, a successful career woman willing to leave her profession (she is a respected fashion designer) to be a perfect wife and astute stepmother; much to Cecile's chagrin her father falls for Anne's charms, pops the question and Anne answers in the affirmative. Overcome by jealousy and the fear of losing her careless butterfly lifestyle, Cecile hatches a diabolic plot to prevent their marriage from occurring. And unfortunately, she succeeds, with tragic consequences.

The morale, of course, is: don't mess with Fate! On the other hand, Cecile, having faced her darker side, builds a wall around her heart to keep herself from feeling pain and sorrow, yet as you watch the closing scene, you will understand that the wall is transparent, letting us look into Cecile's soul as she sits in front of her mirror, taking off her make-up with cream, and by now the scene has reverted to black/silver/white...tears are running down her cheeks... and, ah, tristesse.... bonjur, and bonnuit, always.

The cinematography is superb, the opening and closing scenes are various shades of gray and silver, and then as the story flashes back the French Riviera comes alive in glorious colors, Jean Seberg is just beautiful,her portrayal of Cecile deserving of respect, David Niven sophisticated in an easy-going, warm-hearted way, Deborah Kerr's Anne is perfection, and Juliette Greco, playing herself as the night club singer crooning Bonjour Tristesse in her unique style, a real treat. Be prepared to be surprised at how much you will feel touched, and enjoy.

PS: French author Francoise Sagan, had made international headlines when she was a teenager with her first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse". Her background was privileged, a la her heroine, Cecile's; born Francoise Quoirez to a wealthy family in Cajarc in southwestern France, Sagan - who took her pseudonym from a character in Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" - was educated in private and convent schools at home and in Switzerland. She wrote "Bonjour Tristesse" ("Hello Sadness") in 1953 while on a summer holiday from her studies at the Sorbonne. Sagan, then 18, completed the manuscript in just six weeks.
Interesting to note how the world has changed, since then... upon its release in 1954, Bonjour Tristesse created a furor in France. Some critics scorned it as a tale of "passionless hedonism" and Sagan was called immoral and was marked as symbolizing a generation of bored and blasé young adults. They could not have been more wrong....

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