A young woman who watches a stranger get off a bus in the pouring rain, soon finds out she's being stalked by that exact man. When at home, the man breaks into her house (as her husband is away) and rapes her. Later on after the ordeal the man still happens to be the house, but she grabs a shotgun and shoots him. Where she would dump the body into the ocean. Then suddenly another man appears on the scene named Harry Dobbs, who goes out of the way to try to convince the young woman she committed a murder without giving too much away.This tightly handled low-budget French / Italian co-production is an improbable, but an oddly bold and stimulating teaser that seems straight forward at first, then suddenly it leads you down many knotty paths (with Hitchcock shades) before breaking out the truth of the matter. It's a real curiously acute piece (adapted from a novel) by director Rene Clement, who gets interestingly respectable performances out of very fitting Charles Bronson (whose character is a hard one to figure out) and Marlene Jobert adding some innocent starch to her role. The film / story really do draw from these two performances in dissecting the character's formal makeup and inner workings in how they play a big part to the scheme of things. It's hard to tell the lingering intentions behind the bigger picture, as it becomes exhaustingly confounding in its investigative details and suggestive developments. The productively sharp script is thoroughly meticulous in disguising the truth; as barriers are broken to only go on to create new scenarios and leads. Stark, moody atmospherics lend well to Clement's leeringly grounded, subdued style where it really breathes of a quiet intensity to its continuously building psychological framework and dour visuals within its slow-going nature. The gloomy opening stages really do build upon a creepy ambiance, which pulls you in and the score is sparsely used, but has a dramatic sting. The performances outside the central turns are finely tailored with the likes of Annie Cordy, Ellen Bahl, Jean Gaven, Steve Eckardt and Jill Ireland in one her first roles starring alongside Bronson.

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.

"Rider on the Rain" is a slowly-paced and occasionally confusing mystery from French director René Clément with disappointing passages but a shrewd sense of time and place, and a keen eye for detail. Plot involves a young woman who has killed her rapist and disposed of the body, later meeting a shifty stranger who somehow knows her secret. Vividly-rendered film stays in the mind, with pungent dialogue and incredible, moody atmospherics, though the story does take a few wrong turns. If you can get passed this, you'll find an exceptional, arty thriller, one with a terrific finale. Good cast headed by Charles Bronson, in one of his best early roles. **1/2 from ****

The film 'Rider On The Rain' (or, French title 'Le Passager De La Pluie') is simply a gem. But, do not buy the awful DVD from Orbit Media, released April 3rd 2006. There is hardly any colour and the print is atrocious! I have complained to Orbit and they said they are checking copies, but it is simply a case of poor quality in the Way the DVD has been made from the master. This is the worst DVD release I have ever seen. The picture is not clear enough either. I can't believe this mess. The only place you can get this film is France, but it's all in french (with Charles Bronson dubbed in French). However, the French DVD is by STUDIO CANAL and the print is breathtaking! Be warned.