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Return from the Ashes
A Jewish woman, Dr. Michele Wolf, interred in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII returns to her Paris home after the war's end. She's unaware that her husband, the handsome gigolo and chess master Stanislaw Pilgrin, has been having an affair with her stepdaughter Fabi in her absence.
Release : | 1965 |
Rating : | 7 |
Studio : | The Mirisch Company, Orchard Productions, |
Crew : | Director of Photography, Assistant Director, |
Cast : | Maximilian Schell Samantha Eggar Ingrid Thulin Herbert Lom Talitha Pol |
Genre : | Drama Thriller |
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
I love this movie so much
For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
Although J. Lee Thompson was the producer-director, this would-be suspenser plays like an Anatole Litvak cast-off. French female X-ray technician (Jewish and widowed, with one stepdaughter) is separated from her second husband on their wedding day by the Nazis; in 1945, having survived time in a concentration camp, she meets up with him again, but he doesn't recognize her and asks if she'll pose as herself so he can collect on her fortune. Worse, he is now romancing the woman's stepdaughter, who has grown into a godless, amoral bitch. Adaptation of Hubert Monteilhet's novel is overly-busy with flashbacks and asides (such as the kicking child on the train) which fail to add up to anything substantial or exciting. Ingrid Thulin's strong lead performance nearly holds the film together for much of the way, even if she far outclasses this crackpot material. ** from ****
Once upon a time, before the giallos and the slasher films took over, there was an undercurrent of clever thrillers ... where you knew who had done it, but the question was could they get away with it? The earliest one I can remember is The Unsuspected with Claude Raines as a DJ with a mission ... In the '60's we had director William Castle's twisted thrillers (Homicidal is my favorite) and Bette Davis as Baby Jane and Charlotte ... then along came Return from the Ashes, at about the same time as Bunny Lake Is Missing. Ladies and gentlemen, RftA is a stunning thriller which will keep you enthralled from the expositionary opening to the wonderfully complex plot developments. Why is this not available to viewers today? This is a movie I would like to show friends. Hard to believe it was 40 + years ago I sat in a darkened theater enraptured by the clever plot with more twists and turns than you could believe. If you see this movie in any listings, record it! Ingrid Thulin, Samantha Eggar and Maximilian Schell pull out all the stops but they make you BELIEVE the lurid goings-on. Too bad movie makers can't look at these old classics and learn how to pace and plot a good thriller.
I just want to briefly agree with the previous comments here. I haven't seen this movie in over thirty years, since high school, but it stands out vividly in my memory. Intriguing story beautifully acted by three outstanding stars. Why do films fall by the wayside? I hope this isn't one of the lost films that we keep hearing about. I guess our only hope of seeing this now is if TCM broadcasts it....or if it becomes a Criterion DVD release. Criterion has been wonderful in giving us beautiful prints of rare or hard to find classics. If anyone hears of Return from the Ashes returning from the ashes (LOL) please post the info here.
This film has suffered a strange fate. It used to be shown on tv all the time and was inevitably given two stars, when it is in fact a four-star movie. It is inconceivable that there is not plot summary here, so here goes:Michelle, a currently single middle-aged medical doctor with a young daughter [already daring for the time], encounters the young fortune hunter Stanislaus in a casual meeting and makes him her boy toy. Michelle happens to be Jewish in Nazi-occupied Paris. When the Nazis do their thing, gentile Stan marries her in a moment of bravura that belies his true character. Nevertheless, they carry Michelle off to concentration camp. Several years after the war ends, she turns up and reunites with Charles, her former colleague at the hospital. She is so worn and haggard that she is hardly recognizable. Charles performs some plastic surgery, then she runs into Stan, who has taken up with Michelle's beautiful and still somewhat girlish daughter Gabby. Stan sees the striking resemblance and asks "Mme. Robert" if she will impersonate his supposedly late wife because French law won't give Gabby access to her mother's assets without a dead or alive body. Michelle agrees because she thinks it might be fun, but soon reveals herself as the real Michelle. Stan pretends to be reconciled with Michelle but plots with Gabby against her life.This is the longest summary I have written because it is a very convoluted but masterfully managed plot. This is a much more convincing movie about mistaken/not mistaken identity than Hitchcock's "Vertigo." It is a three-character movie and all three are magnificent. I have left enough out of the summary to keep you in considerable suspense.