Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Moderato cantabile (1960) was shown in the U.S. with the title Seven Days . . .Seven Nights. Peter Brook directed this French film, and Marguerite Duras adapted her novel for the screen. (Note that IMDb has the film listed with its U.S. title, although the VHS uses the original French title, and lists the date of release as 1959.) The plot of the movie is somewhat basic. A beautiful woman leads a banal life as the trophy wife of a town's leading industrialist. Her only pleasure is her interactions with her son, Pierre, who is about seven years old. (The title Moderato Cantabile comes from the son's piano teacher, who is trying to get him to understand the concept.)Within the first few minutes of the film, a horrible scene occurs in a bar right next to the piano teacher's home. For the rest of the film, the plot keeps circling back to discussion that event. We assume something bad is going to happen, although we don't know what.Jeanne Moreau plays the wife, Anne, and Jean Paul Belmondo plays Chauvin, someone who works in her husband's factory. They meet and discuss the event, and then we watch their relationship unfold.This would be just another black and white French film from the 1950's, except that it stars Moreau and Belmondo. Belmondo is a formidable masculine presence, with his high cheekbones and his broken nose. Moreau is unique--certainly one of the great actors of the 20th Century.Director Brooks knows that when he is working with Moreau he is working with an extraordinary actor, and he lets us know that he knows. In one scene, there's a single image of Moreau's face that fills the screen. That single image is on the screen for almost 30 seconds! Those large eyes and downturned mouth are a part of French and worldwide cinematic culture.I want to make note of Didier Haudepin, who plays Moreau's son, Pierre. He's an extraordinary child actor, because he looked as if he weren't acting. He had a major role in the movie, but it appeared that he was just a normal kid who didn't like piano lessons. It's hard for an actor-- especially a child--to look as if he weren't acting. Haudepin managed it, and it's no surprise that he went on to have an outstanding career in film.We saw this movie on VHS cassette, but it's available on DVD. It's an excellent film, and definitely worth seeking out and viewing.P.S. We became interested in Moderato Cantabile because years ago we acquired an original movie poster of the film. We eventually donated the poster to the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. If you attend The Little, you'll see it prominently displayed. Our thought to ourselves was--you've seen the poster, now watch the movie!

Almost surreal in its emptiness, boredom, and the incomprehensible melodrama of the main character. I think her motivation is explained by her being in a constant state of boredom and despair, who is briefly given a futile energy when she eroticises the death of a stranger at the hands of a lover and finds a man willing to, briefly, play along with her fascination and give her a slight thrill in a flirtatious acquaintance based on discussing the case. But nothing really happens. At all. Then he says he's leaving, she screams in despair, and then it ends. Was she disappointed she didn't arouse enough passion in him for him to murder her? It's basically a bored wife in a passionless marriage having an extremely brief and relatively mild breakdown that leads to nothing. I had a hard time empathising with her, which unfortunately might be the key to really getting the most out of this film. The mother/child relationship is touchingly portrayed though.There's also an atmosphere of unsettling hostility in the village that I just don't understand the purpose of, but I've noticed that in french films before so maybe it's just how life is over there in a provincial town. It's beautifully made and there's some lovely cinema-photography.

for the Duras's atmosphere. for the lead actors. for the story, landscapes, dialogs, the piano lesson or for its end. for the illustration of a state of soul as result of a mixture of sin, fear, high expectations and fall. a film about a woman and a man. all in simple manner presented. a town. and few meetings. and level of dark revelation. a film of silhouettes and silence. and it is enough for discover an universe who could be part from yourself. a film about choices. and about a strange form of music. Jeanne Moreau is not a surprise. Belmondo is the perfect choice despite the expectations about other actor if you read the novel. the result - not comfortable but good occasion for reflection. about love. and about versions of Madame Bovary.

Peter Brook's MODERATO CANTABILE was praised in its day, but has nearly been forgotten. Not a crowd pleaser, this is a film that will probably appeal to a limited audience. The screenplay is based on the Marguerite Duras novel of the same name. Duras deliberately avoided dramatic incident for the main characters and wanted to only observe their interior states. In the film, Brooks tries to find an equivalent for this approach and he succeeds. From the opening scene, we can see we are in for an unusual type of film experience. A young boy is in the middle of a piano lesson. We see his teacher react with impatience to the boy's distracted dreaminess. The boy's mother, Anne (Jeanne Moreau), tries to keep him on track, but little is accomplished. Then, a woman's scream is heard from outside the window. Boy, mother and teacher look out to see a great deal of commotion and police presence in front of a café next door. When the woman goes down to look, she sees a female corpse in the café and a man being led away by police. Surreptitiously watching Anne is Chauvin (Jean-Paul Belmondo). For the first third of the film, he will follow the mother and son around the town (Blaye, near Bordeaux). Idly rich and bored, the pair have little to do but wander in the woods and ride the ferry across the dull, gray Gironde river. Chauvin has little to do himself and one day he approaches Anne. After a short time, they begin a romance. The romance is presented in a very muted, unprovocative way. What is interesting about it is the way that Anne insists on Chauvin narrating his rendition of the story behind the shot woman and the man in the café. It's clear that an analogy is being made between that couple and the film's protagonists. The drama in this story happens to other people, not to the main characters. Clandestine meetings continue and at one point Chauvin decides he has had enough of Anne's need to live a vicarious tragedy. He puts her off and refuses to continue. The film goes to great length to express the isolation of these characters: a bored, lonely rich man's wife in an enormous estate and a solitary factory worker (we are only told he works there, we don't see it). Brooks and his cinematographer Armand Thirard do a fine job of establishing the overwhelming melancholy of this story. Locations are used to express the characters' emotional states in much the same way that Antonioni uses locations in his films. This film seems to be saying that some are trapped in their lives and there is only temporary, perhaps imagined, escape from the dull greyness of it all. A piano sonatina by Diabelli is the only music used for the soundtrack and its Mozartean prettiness seems at odds with the somber tale, perhaps a small touch of irony. Or perhaps an expression of the way small amounts of sunlight can be let into a gray world, singing, but with moderation.