Bonjour Tristeese (1958)
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81% of critics liked it
(16 reviews) -
69% of users liked it
(1,464 ratings)
Francoise Sagan's bittersweet novel Bonjour Tristesse is given a sumptuous Riviera-filmed screen treatment. David Niven plays a wealthy playboy, the father of teenaged libertine-in-the-making Jean Seberg. Seberg tolerates most of her father's mistresses, but doesn't know what to make of… More Francoise Sagan's bittersweet novel Bonjour Tristesse is given a sumptuous Riviera-filmed screen treatment. David Niven plays a wealthy playboy, the father of teenaged libertine-in-the-making Jean Seberg. Seberg tolerates most of her father's mistresses, but doesn't know what to make of the prudish Deborah Kerr, who will not cohabit with Niven until after they're married. Feeling that her own relation with her father will be disrupted by Kerr's presence, Seberg does her malicious best to break up the relationship--only to be beaten to the punch by Niven, who despite his promises of fidelity to Kerr cannot give up his hedonistic lifestyle. The combination of the daughter's disdain and the father's rakishness drive Kerr to suicide. Niven and Seberg continue pursuing their lavish but empty lifestyle, though both realize that their lack of moral fibre has destroyed a life. The incestuous undertones of the original Sagan novel are only slightly downplayed in the film version; the "tristesse" (sadness) is visually conveyed by filming the Deborah Kerr flashback scenes in color and the opening and closing of the film in bleak black and white. Bonjour Tristesse was codirected by Otto Preminger, who'd previously discovered Jean Seberg for his benighted 1957 filmization of Saint Joan. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Directed By
- Otto Preminger
- Written By
- Françoise Sagan, Arthur Laurents
- Genres
- Drama, Romance, Classics
Unrated,
- In Theaters
- Jan 1, 1958 Wide
- Studio
- Sony Pictures Entertainment
Critic Reviews
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Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
Niven and Kerr keenly satirize their onscreen iconographies-the cad and the goody-goody, respectively-but it's Seberg who cuts deepest.
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Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice
Otto Preminger's formally dazzling 1958 film is an edifice constructed of contrasts.
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Variety Staff, Variety
Script deficiencies and awkward reading -- some lines are spoken as though just that -- have static results.
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, Time Out
The flirtation with incest at the centre of this adaptation of Françoise Sagan's novel is tame by modern standards, but the evil scheming of Seberg as the daughter set on separating her father and his mistress is still forceful.
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Bosley Crowther, New York Times
A bomb.
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Cast
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Deborah Kerr
as Anne Larsen
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David Niven
as Raymond
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Jean Seberg
as Cecile
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Mylène Demongeot
as Elsa Mackenbourg
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Geoffrey Horne
as Philippe
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Juliette Greco
as Night Club Singer
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Walter Chiari
as Pablo
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Martita Hunt
as Philippe's Mother
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Jean Kent
as Mrs. Lombard
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David Oxley
as Jacques
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Elga Andersen
as Denise
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Jeremy Burnham
as Hubert Duclos
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Roland Culver
as Mr. Lombard
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Tutte Lemkow
as Pierre Schube
