Oui

The Long Absence. In a village on the Seine a widow (Alida Valli) keeps a small cafe. Her husband, caught by the Gestapo during World War II, has been dead for 15 years, and she has long since made her peace with life, and found a lover, and stopped thinking about things that thinking cannot change.

One evening, while she muses on her doorstep, a tall old tramp (Georges Wilson) strides by. She staggers back, moves as if to cry out, hesitates, stares after him bewildered. Impossible! But for an instant she could have sworn the old tramp was her husband! Next day when he comes by again she asks him in. He has a kind mouth and sad eyes that light up wonderfully when she plays Rossini on the jukebox, but something in his face suggests a damaged and diminished man. "I've lost my memory," he explains shyly. She faints. She is sure it is he.

But is it? She speaks her husband's name: "Albert Langlois." No reaction. She recalls her husband's record in the Resistance, the prisons he was held in. Still no reaction. She confronts the tramp with her husband's aunt. Not a flicker of recognition. She feeds him the dishes her husband loved. He cannot remember them. In agony she cries out: "Why do you refuse your past! Why do you refuse your life!" Then she sees the awful scar on the back of his head.

He takes her hand. "You are a nice woman," he says gently, regretfully. And then he leaves. She runs to the door. "Stop, Albert Langlois!" she screams after him. "Stop!" the villagers take up the cry. "You are wanted!" He stops as though a shot had been fired, and then, as if compelled by a reflex he cannot control, he slowly and with infinite hopelessness lifts his hands above his head.

The moment is stunning, and if the picture as a whole is rather less impressive it is nevertheless a fine little film. Director Henri Colpi, a 40-year-old film editor (Last Year at Marienbad) who had never before made a feature picture, has started strong. The Long Absence is notable for modesty, sincerity, genuine warmth. It is never impelled to seem larger than life; it is never felt to be less than human.

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