AND SOON THE DARKNESS - First watch, having delayed for ages after being bored shitless by the absolutely dismal remake (which is really one to avoid). However, this, the original 1970 prototype, is wonderful, a simmering, slow burning Euro thriller which seethes with claustrophobia and paranoid tension. It follows two Brit cyclists as they struggle through rural France, portrayed here as a desolate, windswept place full of empty fields, enigmatic encounters and mysterious figures staring in the distance. The sense of hostility around every corner is ramped up by the girl's (and probably much of its UK audience's) ignorance - they don't speak French well and neither do I, and this intensifies the atmosphere of isolation as the two split up and come to realise that a sex killer is lurking down one of those 'bad roads'. It matches pared down minimalism with a kind of oppressive repetition - the same few characters, sets and locations recur and seem to cycle around each other, giving a sense of things closing in and becoming nightmarishly inevitable. If it puts a foot or two wrong it's by way of the slightly too obvious (sometimes) music cues and the mid section, which is a bit flabbier and less tense than the rest... but overall, this is definitely a must-see seventies relic and a great example of quietly weird cinema. I really like the director's 'Dr Phibes', but this is very different in approach, and I prefer it.
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