“Rider on the Rain”

Movie Review

Marlene Jobert and Charles Bronson star in Rider on the Rain, a 1970 French mystery-thriller movie that was produced by Serge Silberman, directed by Rene Clement, written by Sebastien Japrisot, and included Francis Lai's score. The Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe was given to it.

The movie begins with a Lewis Carroll quote to imply that the protagonist is similar to Alice in Wonderland, and it takes place on a wet autumn afternoon in a little resort on the south coast of France.

Mellie, who recently wed Toni, a navigator for an airline who is away at work, notices a strange man getting off a bus. She notices the man watching her while she is trying on a dress to wear to a wedding the next day. He enters the house undetected when she gets home, ties her up, and rapes her. After she has managed to release herself and discovers that he is still inside, she pulls a shotgun and shoots him. When her envious husband returns, she drives the body to a cliff and throws it overboard without saying a word.

She had a conversation with an unwelcome American named Dobbs at the wedding the following day. He says she killed him, and she denies it. A body has been discovered. The day following that, while her husband is abroad once more, Dobbs enters their home secretly and roughhouses with Mellie. She starts to believe that Dobbs' persistence is because the rapist had some sort of business with Toni, possibly involving drugs. She goes to the bank with him and offers him whatever she has after taking it out. But all he wants is the truth; not money.

Mellie discovers the rapist's travel bag the following morning, which contains 60,000 US dollars. She enters Dobbs' hotel room undercover and searches it, finding out that he is a US Army colonel on a top-secret mission. He shows her there and informs her that a Parisian restaurant employee has been detained in connection with the murder. Mellie boards a plane for Paris after learning that the woman is innocent and goes to the restaurant, which directs her to her sister's workplace. Three thieves question Mellie roughly about the deceased man in what turns out to be a brothel. She had been pursued by Dobbs, who enters and saves her.

Dobbs takes her home and explains that the body is not the rapist's but rather another man's. The rapist, who had previously raped three women in a similar way before Mellie, was an escapee from a US military jail. She then reveals to him where she dumped the body, which the police frogmen discover. Dobbs considers the situation to be resolved and refrains from informing the police about Mellie. Moreover, he makes no mention of the $60,00.

The identity of the rapist, Mac Guffin, is revealed in a last nod to Alfred Hitchcock.

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