You won't be disappointed!

Let's be realistic.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Here are some background facts about Rider on the Rain -it's my all-time favorite: I saw it many times in Philly during its initial release and bought a 16mm print from Avco Embassy in the '70s to study it, doing a shot-by-shot analysis. CLEMENT: Director René Clément, an avowed Hitchcock admirer, in a book of essays about his own work (unfortunately never translated from French) stressed the importance of detail -little items of design, recurring motifs, repeated camera moves, as the essence of his cinema. Repeated viewings of Rider reward one with these carefully set up details that go beyond the usual surface effects (without Spoilers, watch for the shtick with the walnuts, subtle camera moves, and esp. the careful obscuring or revealing of objects in the frame, e.g., by the bus early on, or the camera angles of the body removal scene). He was a master director, winning 2 Foreign Film Oscars with diverse classics including Gervaise, Forbidden Games, Purple Noon, Battle of the Rails, Monsieur Ripois and The Walls of Malapaga, as well as one ripe for rediscovery -The Sea Wall. His love of detail is on full display in Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (Clément was technical adviser). It's no coincidence that the mysterious title character in Rider is named Mac Guffin as a Hitchcock nod, well-played by the sinister Marc Mazza.JAPRISOT: The screenwriter, whose pen name was an anagram of his real moniker, based this script on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, opening the film with a perfect table-setting quote: Either the well was too deep, or she fell very slowly..., which explains heroine Mellie's adventure to come. Known for A Very Long Engagement, his other recommended films include the very clever Isabelle Adjani thriller One Deadly Summer, and the very odd film of his novel The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, directed by Anatole Litvak. Lady features perhaps the longest flashback scene used as an explanation in a film's denouement, even outdoing the flashbacks that were the basis of the Barry Newman TV series Petrocelli or even the current Lost series.BRONSON: Rider was a key film in Charles Bronson's career -a huge hit all over Europe and his breakthrough as a star, after gaining int'l success in ensemble casts for Once Upon a Time in the West and The Dirty Dozen, as well as Far East popularity opposite Alain Delon in So Long, Friend. His name in the cast is Col. Dobbs, but on the soundtrack and colloquially in France his character was known just as The American (see soundtrack LP for The American's Theme), becoming something of an iconic figure. His assurance, mysterious manner and (as Charles Laughton once praised him) great presence/center of gravity on screen add immeasurably to the film. I met him once in NYC while interviewing Michael Winner during the filming of a Death Wish sequel, and Bronson at the time was planning to do an American remake of Rider on the Rain for Cannon Films but it never happened. For the French language version of Rider his role was dubbed by expatriate blacklisted director John Berry, and there has always been a debate over the value of the French vs. English soundtrack version of Rider (Bronson dubbed vs. rest of cast dubbed; analogous to Burt Lancaster in the 2 versions of Visconti's The Leopard). JOBERT: Marlene Jobert was the most popular gamin actress in France at the time, having starred in L'Astragale (a remarkable true story adapted from the novel by the woman who lived it, Albertine Sarrazin), and went on to make unsuccessful international films but one classic, Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together, which I saw at the NY Film Festival with her in attendance. She is central to Rider's success and was lauded by Judith Crist in a rave review when it came out. There is a great scene near the end of the film with plenty of Alice in Wonderland atmosphere when she is taken by prostitute Marika Green to see Corinne Marchand (the iconic French actress/chanteuse of Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7), in which Clément makes great effect of the height differential between the women. Jobert met and married Marika's brother Walter and their daughter is French star Eva Green of James Bond fame, an interesting followup to the Rider casting. Another more famous singer, Belgian star Annie Cordy, plays Jobert's mother in Rider, and it spring-boarded her acting career.FRANCIS LAI: The soundtrack album (well worth hunting for) enshrines one of Lai's best and for me most memorable scores, truly indispensable to amplifying the strange, rainy day, off-season in a Riviera resort town mood of this unique film. Best known at the time for his A Man and a Woman score, he did Love Story soon after Rider.SERGE SILBERMAN: The producer of Rider was a great filmmaker, now little remembered (outside of France) since his death. I got to interview him during one of his lesser efforts, filming James Toback's Exposed with Rudolf Nureyev in NYC (I appear unpaid as an extra in that film, one even Toback booster Pauline Kael couldn't love). Besides the 5 later films of Luis Bunuel he produced, Silberman has his share of other all-time classics as producer, not by accident: Melville's Bob le flambeur, Jacques Becker's Le Trou, Beineix's Diva and Kurosawa's Ran. It's an amazing track record spanning a career of only a couple dozen films.

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."

I really love this movie... Yes, there are parts that are stupid, like when Bronson forces the french babe to drink alcohol.. What kind of technique is that?? And I didn't understand the walnut thing... I think Bronson must have been cracking them before he threw them... I heard he was one strong dude... I was only 14 the first time I watched it so one of my favorite parts was watching the french babe in her see through top... But the movie has stood up to time and it is as good or better, everytime I rewatch it... Since I live in the U.S. ,it is like taking a 1-1/2 hour trip to France, or at least what I would imagine France would be like, since I was never there... Great film, go see it... It is much better than most of the garbage films that are in the video stores today...

Yes, folks, I'm sick of reading the comments "more violence from Bronson". This in my opinion is a minor masterpiece of a film. It creates an atmosphere; that of '60s Europa. Those who can't get into this film can't get into the '60s. I can see how Jim Morrison based Riders on the Storm on this. Marlene Jobert is great as the naive woman who stumbles into Bronsonian intrigue. The film itself directed by Clement is a success in expressing artistic vision in the guise of a "typical Bronson film". The comedic interplay between Bronson and Jobert make the film. It's basically an esoteric love story with that '60s feel that only us Jim Morrisons can appreciate.Aside from this film I think Bronson is a great, cool, and at times brilliant actor. His great underrated films include: Death Wish (I hate every Death Wish sequel), Evil that Men Do, Mechanic, Once upon a Time in the West, and all his '60s and '70s stuff. His '80s stuff is the throwaway stuff.