Amazon.com video review:
Jean-Pierre Melville's second film, made in 1950, became a significant
influence among French filmmakers and earned Melville renown as a maverick
who could do wonderful things outside his country's studio system.
(Melville's independence was a forerunner of that enjoyed later in the
decade by New Wave figures such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc
Godard.)
Les Enfants Terribles is based on a 1929 novel by poet and filmmaker
Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the script with Melville and according to
some people interfered in everything from the casting (the rather stiff
male lead was a Cocteau protege) to the photography. Nevertheless, the
story of a sister (an outstanding performance by Nicole Stephane) and
brother (Edouard Dhermite) who withdraw into their own, insulated world
to play out suggestively erotic dramas, has a fluid, lyrical movement that
is part of a visionary whole. In some ways a harbinger of the coming pop
narcissism of youth culture, Les Enfants Terribles is also a timeless
tale of mythic exploration of existence and purpose. --Tom
Keogh
