runamokprods A beautiful film, in terms of both images and story. This very sweet - but never sticky -and slightly disturbing story of a platonic 'love affair' between a psychologically damaged, almost child-like ex-soldier and an emotionally abandoned 12 year old girl is deeply moving, honest, and just creepy enough in terms of in nascent sexuality hovering around the edges of the relationship to keep us from feeling too at ease. Shot in gorgeous black and white, with great use of shadows and silhouette, the images are both beautiful and mysterious -- as is the film's central relationship. Hardy Kruger is excellent as the amnesiac soldier who has the feeling he's done something awful, but doesn't know what, or how to atone for it (we know more, having seen a dream- like flashback of his war experiences to open the film). He is lovable and sad, but we sense there's always a danger this man could lose control and cause damage without meaning to. And Patricia Gozzi is remarkable as the young girl, bringing an almost frightening amount of pain to this hurt character, and never feeling like a kid faking it for a film. There's a complex honesty to her performance combining hurt, innocent joy, emotional need, the first flickers of adult sensuality and manipulativeness, and yet a child's open heart that any seasoned actor would envy. The film does telegraph where its headed more than once, but somehow it doesn't matter very much. It's the humanity of the telling rather than any surprise twist that makes the film work so well. We root for this odd pair to be able to maintain their bond in the face of a grown up world that doesn't understand how much these two damaged souls need each other and is, as one character puts it, afraid of any love that doesn't fit into nice neat categories. Beautifully made and haunting, it won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1962.

Richard Burin A childlike amnesiac (Hardy Kruger), unable to repair his life after a wartime plane crash, befriends a 12-year-old girl abandoned by her father. They enjoy blissful Sundays together, aside from his periodic attacks of irrationality, but outsiders begin to distrust the relationship, leading to tragedy. This intensely moving, truly original drama – with increasingly spare comic touches – confronts the cynicism, horror and alienation of the adult world, Bourguignon ingeniously shifting styles to contrast the stifling mundanity of Kruger's apartment – and his unconnected life – with the tranquil idyll of the park where he and Cybele indulge in transcendent fantasy. It isn't that Kruger doesn't have love in his adult life, just that he wants to shrink from the world that forced him to gun down an innocent child. He, young Patricia Gozzi and Nicole Courcel – as the protagonist's conflicted girlfriend Madeleine – are terrific, while the film boasts some of the most striking black-and-white photography you'll ever see: an endlessly creative variety of shots drawing you inexorably in to the heartbreaking story.

Eumenides_0 Pierre, a soldier traumatised in Indochina for killing a child, lives in ghost-like existence. Amnesic, detached and distracted, he spends his days at a train station waiting for his love, Madeleine, to come from work. One day he meets a lonely girl interned in a school and plots an ingenious plan to get her to see every Sunday, by pretending to be her father come to take her out. These two figures, abandoned as they are, are perfect for each other.Serge Bourguignon's Sundays and Cybele is one of those intimate dramas built on almost nothing, so simple and straightforward it is. The movie focuses almost exclusively on Pierre and Cybele, their strolls to the park, and the emotional relief she gives him.The black-and-white cinematography complements the story perfectly, since Pierre's world is also one of dualisms: life and death, adult corruption and youthful innocence, honesty with Cybele and deception with everyone else.Hardy Kruger plays Pierre with feeling, looking like a man who lives lost in a world he's cut off from. He has trouble communicating his ideas and expresses himself with facial expressions and his clumsy body movements. Patricia Gozzi plays the 12-year-old Cybele and I wonder why she didn't triumph in film: at a tender age she showed more talent than many adult actors.Melancholy, serene and introspective, Sundays and Cybele is a drama not to be missed by anyone who enjoys quiet movies built on powerful relationships.

rsd22 Saw this film three times when it was first released in the sixties - the last time walking two miles in pouring rain and skipping study for a college math final the next day. I have not seen a film before or since that has had as powerful an effect on me. If you want to be moved and shaken at the beauty and tragedy of the human condition, see this film. Unfortunately, the video quality is poor, but see it anyway.