★ 10 / 10
A forgotten classic
Mihnea_aka_Pitbull
One of the most sensitive and stylish Romanian lyrical classics, proving that Romanian and French cultures are closely kindred. Henri Colpi really grokked the…
One of the most sensitive and stylish Romanian lyrical classics, proving that Romanian and French cultures are closely kindred. Henri Colpi really grokked the spirit of Mihail Sebastian's famous play, sensibly expressing the quest for the absolute of the idealistic astronomy professor mired in a barren small town.Marina Vlady is indeed the perfect "Mona" ("the nameless star"), and Claude Rich portrays with empathy and refinement the sentimental Miroiu. But, of course, the cake is stolen by Grigore Vasiliu Birlic, peerless in another of his masterful performances. A movie to be seen with a tender smile and a tear in your eye's corner.
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★ 9 / 10
Are you just a vision or are you really real?
ulicknormanowen
Henri Colpi only made four films ,two in France ("une aussi longue absence" (1960) and "heureux qui comme Ulysse " (1969) ,and two in Romania ("Codine "…
Henri Colpi only made four films ,two in France ("une aussi longue absence" (1960) and "heureux qui comme Ulysse " (1969) ,and two in Romania ("Codine " ,arguably his masterpiece ,and this movie) ;all were off the beaten track and all deserve your undivided attention .A small railway station in the middle of nowhere in Romania ,where the station master treats himself to the delight of a duck (run over by a train),backed with cabbages, a gossip woman and a shy maths teacher who lives alone in the small town .Then she appears : out of the train, she seems to come."from another world " ....or "from a distant star"; Miroiu the teacher is dazzled ,so is the viewer.Marina Vlady was of Russian descent ; her pairing with Claude Rich was a stroke of genius ;she's a socialite but her life is unfulfilled and in the short space of one night , her life will be forever changed (I"ll visit you every night") ; he's a maths teacher, who's got to live up to his reputation,because gossips run rampant in this small microcosm.But his world is actually infinite ("we talk about infinite to teens when they study calculus"):he's got the whole sky where he's found a star near the Great Bear ; Mona ,although moving in a privileged luxury world,never looked up to sea the sky at night. At night, in the garden ,under the star-spangled sky ,they will meet ,a thousand light years from their earthly ride.Claude Rich is at the top of his game ,the perfect daydreamer with the head in the clouds, and Vlady's luminous eyes and stunning beauty work wonders ;an infinite poetry emanates from these pictures ; nothing really happens,but something did happen.George Delerue's score is ,as always , marvelous : the waltz theme, under the starry sky is a moment of magnificence ;Delerue who worked for the greatest directors in the world ,wrote the music to the four Colpi works. The director also wrote the words to the 1960 effort ("trois petites notes de musique" ) and to his final work ('"heureux qui comme Ulysse " ,sung by Georges Brassens.)
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★ 10 / 10
Good as old wine!
RodrigAndrisan
Simple, very romantic story, flawlessly interpreted by a handful of excellent actors: the unique beauty Marina Vlady, the eternal with his head in the clouds…
Simple, very romantic story, flawlessly interpreted by a handful of excellent actors: the unique beauty Marina Vlady, the eternal with his head in the clouds
Claude Rich, the tough, young and beautiful Cristea Avram, the comic without any effort Grigore Vasiliu-Birlic and a perfect Eugenia Popovici in the role of Miss Cucu. Beautiful and delicate music signed by Georges Delerue. Henri Colpi, the same who made the absolute masterpiece "Codine" (1963), added in his filmography another masterpiece. Both films, "Codine" and "Mona, l'Etoile sans nom", are screenings of Romanian writers, Panait Istrati and Mihail Sebastian. Exceptional films, having nothing communist, no bit of propaganda, although made in communist Romania of the 1960s.
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7.9/10
200
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This is not "Mona, l'etoile sans nom" (the French version), but "Steaua fara nume", the Romanian version of a Franco-Romanian production. The soundtrack is Romanian (not French!), as are all the actors, except for Vlady and Rich, who are, of course, dubbed in Romanian.