Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13638 in VHS
• Released on: 1996-09-17
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Amazon.com
This beloved 1962 film from the golden age of international cinema can't help but look terribly self-conscious now, full of ambivalent nods to the contemporaneous vitality of the French New Wave (an obligatory iris shot of star Hardy Kruger, for instance, as seen through something like a tiny knothole). There is also a fair amount of dragging and wasted motion in the overlong story, but even that is forgivable given this film's extraordinary, soulful portrait of a beautiful if impossible relationship. Kruger plays Pierre, a former military pilot whose plane crashed after a bombing raid in Indochina. Killing a little girl in the process, Pierre suffers a psychological trauma that is lessened by the company of a 12-year-old orphan named Cybele (Patricia Gozzi), herself an abandoned, luckless child in need of companionship. Meeting every Sunday, the two become immersed in a deeply affectionate world of their own, where nothing unsavory actually occurs yet a full range of emotional colors seems possible--much like two innocents reborn in each other's eyes. Cowriter and director Serge Bourguignon adopts a fairy-tale tone for both the central bond between Pierre and Cybele as well as the oddly harsh, uncaring social environment that inevitably condemns their union. Bourguignon is lucky to have a couple of important allies: Maurice Jarre for the musical score and legendary cinematographer Henri Decae behind the lens. While these artists can't save Bourguignon from his own trite excesses as a visualist, they enhance his considerable feeling for the redemptive poetry of an unlikely love. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Lovely film, lousy print
"Sundays and Cybele" is a beautiful film, sensitively handling the delicate subject of an adult male's love for a young girl. Unfortunately, it's another case of less than pristine elements being used to make a video transfer. As previous reviewers have noted, the widescreen print that's been transfered to video is quite poor, with dull contrast, heavy scratches, and extremely difficult to read subtitles. Amazingly, there is a better transfer available, a fine contrast print with deep grey tones and few scratches, and -get this- new, yellow subtitles! Unfortunately, it's a pan-and-scan version where you end up losing nearly half of the available image, but at least you can read the subtitles with ease. This version has turned up on cable tv over the last few years, but was never on video, as far as I can tell. Why a letterboxed video version hasn't been put together with the same or similar elements, I don't know. Until that happens though, we'll have to make do with what we have. It's a shame this is the case, because "Sundays and Cybele" deserves better.

nostalgic, not-so-innocent, beautiful
This is first and foremost an extremely beautiful film. The photography, the composition, the pearly grays, the delicate reflections, the enchanting smile of Patricia Gozzi, her tears, all account for an unforgettable cinematic experience. Very much in the aesthetics of the sixties, following Ingmar Bergman, that was the time of Fellini and Antonioni, the time of glorious B&W.
The story has become somewhat less convincing with the passing of the years, although it remains painful and nostalgic and sweet. It describes the adult-child love relationship of Cybele and Pierre. Here the adult is the child, Pierre (Hardy Kruger), a pilot who suffered war trauma, amnesia and emotional anesthesia, and the child is the adult, the abandoned twelve-year old girl Cybele (Patricia Gozzi), who has grown in the midst of suffering and loneliness, and who behaves as the mature one in this anomalous and defenceless couple.
The tragedy looms in the air from the beginning and closes inexorably on Pierre and Cybele. The beauty of the scenery and the purity of their child love makes the tragedy more unfair and even more tragic. Their little secret refuge, the tiny microcosm the two lovers have built as a bubble to protect themselves from their inmense loneliness and their fear of the unbearable reality, is shattered like a crystal by the base suspicion of the "grown up" world. The end of the movie is almost unbearable in its suffering and its beauty. One cannot but compare with "The Virgin Spring" by Bergman.
It is unfortunate that neither Serge Bourguignon, the director and scriptwriter, nor Patricia Gozzi, were seen again in a film comparable in quality to this lovely 1962 best foreign movie of the year. I saw this movie first when I was a lonely and shy medical student, it never ever abandoned me afterwards, in all its nostalgic pain and tragic splendor.

Shame
This movie is really a masterpiece.? What a Shame it has never been publisshed in DVD. The quality of the available edition is extremely poor