Rider on the Rain

Rider on the Rain

Rider on the Rain

I saw this movie two or three times in the theater in 1971, when I was ten years old. My brother was obsessed by the movie and he used to take me. Now, after 38 years I saw it again on DVD, and it evoked some memories! I had still remembered since then some of the memorable scenes, like opening the fist of the rapist's body to find the button, and Charles Bronson giving Marlene Jobert the button. It is a great movie. One of the few earliest thriller/romance of its type (post-Hitchcock) to come out. The chemistry between Charles Bronson and Marlene Jobert is great, and I liked the walnut-throwing metaphor. It is a classic!

A lonely passenger of a bus arrives in a rainy day in a remote place in Marseille; he stalks, follows and rapes the gorgeous Mélancolie 'Mellie' Mau (Marlène Jobert), who is married with a jealous husband that is a navigator of Air France and is coming back home. Mellie shoots and kills the masked rapist, but she does not call the police; she prefers to dump his body in the sea and destroy the evidences of his identity. Sooner, the mysterious Harry Dobbs (Charles Bronson) arrives in the location and meets Mellie. Harry seems to know what she has done, scaring Mellie and forcing her to tell the truth. The cult "Le Passager de la Pluie" is one of those unforgettable thrillers of my adolescence, with intelligent and witty dialogs in the duel between Mellie and the smart Harry Dobbs and one of the most beautiful music scores of the cinema history. In this movie, Charles Bronson certainly has the best performance of his successful career, and Marlène Jobert is impressively beautiful performing a very clever character. Unfortunately this film has not been released on DVD in Brazil, but at least the rare VHS has a good quality of image. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "O Passageiro da Chuva" ("The Passenger of the Rain")

Besides its dialogue being simply stunning in piling up repartee after absurdist repartee,the very plot of the film feels more as a joke at the expenses of structuralist critique than a structuralist text per se. In short, it is multi-layered entertainment at its best, with a strong central characterization (Jobert) and great European locations.

I bought a VHS copy of Rider on the Rain in the early 90s when a video store was going out of business. And i had seen it on a NY TV station a few times in the 70s. I hope and pray to the DVD gods that this gets a nice release before too long. The dreamy feel to the entire proceedings is wonderful. Somehow this film is creepy, suspenseful and sweet all at the same time. Bronson and Jobert have such chemistry that i wish they would have done more. This is one of Bronson's 3 or 4 best performances and perhaps no other film tapped into his unique screen presence more than this one. It seems the European's always did understand his appeal more than we Americans. A classic suspense film which, in the end, is more about people, love and maturity than it is about suspense. "Did the bus stop?" "Yes, and a man got off." "The hell he did. Nobody ever rides here on the bus." "Then he must...have ridden in... on the rain."

"Rider on the Rain" is a slowly-paced and occasionally confusing mystery from French director René Clément with disappointing passages but a shrewd sense of time and place, and a keen eye for detail. Plot involves a young woman who has killed her rapist and disposed of the body, later meeting a shifty stranger who somehow knows her secret. Vividly-rendered film stays in the mind, with pungent dialogue and incredible, moody atmospherics, though the story does take a few wrong turns. If you can get passed this, you'll find an exceptional, arty thriller, one with a terrific finale. Good cast headed by Charles Bronson, in one of his best early roles. **1/2 from ****

I'm 18 and a huge fan of Bronson, and alot of you probably know because of the reviews i write all the time on Bronson film. And this is a change of pace for Bronson, tough but acting. Well i think he acts great all the time personally. But critics didn't like him very much, but did that stop him been the biggest star in the world?, i don't think so. He was one of the biggest stars back in early 70's to the till late 80's. I mean all the big films he's done, not bad for a kid from the dumps of pennsylvania. I have the dvd of Violent city and he say's in it about been thrown in Jail for going on a train and having he's head shaven, he had a bad life and look what he did with it has he got older. Made himself a big, and i mean big, big star. Well in this film Bronson plays a cop who's trying to stop a serial killer who rapes woman, he rapes a woman on day and she kills him. And then Bronson comes to her saying he know what she did, he threatens her till she gives him the money the man had. But she didn't kill the man he's saying she killed. I can't say anymore because it'll spoil it. It's very smart for it's time and i recommend it to anyone who loves film made in france and anyone who don't because it's Bronson performance that win you over. Watch it, it's worth it. 10/10

*Note: the review title in subject refers to a line from the classic song "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors. Allegedly, singer/songwriter icon Jim Morrison was a fan of this movie and it inspired him to write what is perhaps the most legendary song of the band. If this piece of trivia info is only even remotely truthful, it's enough reason to track down and watch the film! As for the film itself, "Rider on the Rain" is an absorbing and uniquely mysterious thriller with a downright fabulous first half hour and very atypical but brilliant performance by Charles Bronson. Throughout most of the 60's, Bronson depicted supportive characters in big productions ("The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape", "The Dirty Dozen", "Once Upon a Time in the West") and from the mid-70's and onwards he became hopelessly typecast as a lonesome and silent action hero ("Death Wish", "The Mechanic", "Telefon"…). But what few people know is that Charles Bronson appeared in a number of vastly superior European (more specifically French and Italian) cult movies during the late 60's and early 70's, and in these films he actually illustrated intellectual, eloquent and occasionally even very sinister characters. "Rider on the Rain" truly has one of the moodiest intros ever filmed, as we witness how a tall and uncanny looking man gets off a bus in a French coastal town near Marseille. Whilst meandering in the pouring rain, he spots the feisty redhead Mellie and follows her home. He rapes the girl, but she manages to kill her assailant with a shotgun. As she has an egocentric mother and a mistrustful husband, Mellie chooses not to call the police and dump the body from a cliff into the sea. This goes well until the next weekend at the wedding of a friend; Mellie is approached by a handsome but mysteriously behaving American who asks her a lot of strange questions. This man, Mr. Dobbs, suspiciously seems to know a lot about the crime Mellie committed and brutally attempts to force her into confession. "Rider on the Rain" actually spirals down TOO MUCH into Hitchcockian mystery/thriller territory. The first couple of encounters between Mellie (short for Melancholy, in fact) and Mr. Dobbs are truly intense and compelling because you assume that the pieces of the puzzle will gradually fit together later on. But then the emphasis stubbornly remains on secrecy and endless dialogs and we receive not the slightest bit of information in return. The film is quite long – just over two hours – and we literally have to be patient until the climax before getting any answers. Your curiosity stays, of course, and the acting performances from both Charlie Bronson and the foxy Marlène Jobert remain a joy to behold, but sadly the movie eventually is too talkative and overlong to be considered as an essential must-see in the thriller genre. This is already the second time I run into this issue with a René Clément film, actually. "The Deadly Trap" also revealed absolutely nothing of its plot until the final five minutes. Luckily enough, "Rider on the Rain" still has a fascinating concept, a strong opening and excellent performances, whereas "The Deadly Trap" was just an incoherent and pretentious mess from start to finish. Clement is often referred to as the French Hitchcock, but from what I've seen he tries to be too much of a Hitchcock copycat. I will urgently have to check out some of his older work, like "Forbidden Games" and "Purple Noon", as those are reputedly genuine masterpieces. And yet, this one still comes warmly recommended if only to see a totally different side of Charles Bronson.

Upon watching this movie I really had only the Death Wish films to rate Bronson by but after watching the "Rider on the Rain" I can understand why he was an acclaimed actor. His role in this movie was superbly amazing as the 'I know what you've been up to undercover', his acting is unbelievable and I up until this movie had never seen him act so well and have so much dialogue. Granted I'am very unfamiliar with foreign films (to me they can be confusing at times, maybe that's just a concentration problem on my behalf?) and acting back in 1970 was a whole lot different than today, but nonetheless this movie is worth having on your shelf. It always takes me a few viewings to fully grasp the concept of most films but already by watching it this first time I'am really convinced that this could be his best outing (with the exception of the first Death Wish and Cold Sweat). I still have yet to see more Bronson classics but I'm just getting started and this one definitely 'wowed' me. I would recommend this movie to anyone who is a Bronson fan, must see stuff. 9 out of 10 stars.