RIDER ON THE RAIN (1970) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: René Clement
Charles Bronson, Marlene Jobert,
Jill Ireland, Annie Cordy
The first thing you see in this, before the movie really begins, is a quote from "Alice In Wonderland". Later on, a character borrows a line from "Alice" to remark on how things keep getting curiouser and curiouser, and somebody else says something about Charles Bronson's Cheshire-Cat grin. Then, toward the end, you get Bronson saying, "It's all a mistake. I dreamed up the whole thing," and by that point, you're thinking maybe he did. It starts out with a bus pulling up to a seaside bowling alley in a rainstorm. The bus is empty, but when it pulls away, there's a man standing there next to the road: the "rider" of the title. The man walks on into town, in the rain, spies on a woman changing clothes in a dress shop, and follows her home. He rapes her and she kills him. Then, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, she dumps the body in the sea. Enter Bronson, a mysterious stranger who has lots of questions and knows way more than he should. Who is he? Who was the man in the rain? What's in the red airline bag the man was carrying? And what does the woman know that she's not telling? A good, offbeat mystery, and an interesting showcase for Bronson, who was then in his late 40s and finally starting to play leads, but only in movies made in Europe. His signature role would come a few years later in "Death Wish", but you can see the basic elements of his persona coalescing here: the smile, the squint, the droopy moustache, the winking insolence, the bemused cruelty and the suggestion of invulnerability that would define him on screen for the next 20 years. Watch it with "Once Upon a Time In the West" and maybe "The Dirty Dozen", and the transition comes into focus: an actor who has paid his dues forever, in the process of becoming a star.
