A week-end of distraction in Amsterdam for two miners (Fresson-Ventura, both excellent) and their girls (Marina Vlady is so marvelous and sexy). It is written and shot with a lot of humanity by director Luciano Emmer who was at first a documentary director, he knows how to shoot in real settings. On french DVD edition, there is an excellent interview of Luciano Emmer. Listen to the french audio and enjoy a less known character played by Lino Ventura, with a very very funny sequence with Lino, unforgettable, it should be cult. Don't hesitate, see "la Ragazza in vetrina".
3 Reviews
masterly human comedy
federovsky19 August 2012
A couple of coalminers take a weekend break in Amsterdam and hook up with some temperamental hookers.
A remarkable film in several ways. First, for the detailed coal mining scenes which take up the first half hour. We follow the first day of a new Italian recruit Bernard Fresson in a Mamburg mine. This is pretty eye-opening, especially now that coal mining is a thing of the past. They're wedged into crevices hacking into the stuff with hand-drills. Even in this inhuman environment the director very effectively manages to convey the good-natured stoicism of a number of characters.
It's an Italo-French production that chooses not to be particularly either, but takes an alienated position with people of different nationalities all having a hard time communicating with each other. The amount of stilted communication is remarkable in itself, giving the film a hesitant, uncertain tone that matches Fresson's diffident personality. In looks, Fresson is exactly half-way between Belmondo and Trintignant, and is as good as either of them.
His friend, mine foreman Lino Ventura - all mouth and trousers - takes him to Amsterdam to pick out a girl from their window displays. Uncertain semi-relationships develop, and awkward semi-comedic situations - or completely comedic, such as when Ventura goes into a gay bar by mistake.
Emmer is an absolute master at infusing every scene with quaint human dynamics loaded with sentimental meaning in a manner at once stylish and artless. They should be making documentaries about him, rather than self-publicising pretenders such as Truffaut.
A remarkable film in several ways. First, for the detailed coal mining scenes which take up the first half hour. We follow the first day of a new Italian recruit Bernard Fresson in a Mamburg mine. This is pretty eye-opening, especially now that coal mining is a thing of the past. They're wedged into crevices hacking into the stuff with hand-drills. Even in this inhuman environment the director very effectively manages to convey the good-natured stoicism of a number of characters.
It's an Italo-French production that chooses not to be particularly either, but takes an alienated position with people of different nationalities all having a hard time communicating with each other. The amount of stilted communication is remarkable in itself, giving the film a hesitant, uncertain tone that matches Fresson's diffident personality. In looks, Fresson is exactly half-way between Belmondo and Trintignant, and is as good as either of them.
His friend, mine foreman Lino Ventura - all mouth and trousers - takes him to Amsterdam to pick out a girl from their window displays. Uncertain semi-relationships develop, and awkward semi-comedic situations - or completely comedic, such as when Ventura goes into a gay bar by mistake.
Emmer is an absolute master at infusing every scene with quaint human dynamics loaded with sentimental meaning in a manner at once stylish and artless. They should be making documentaries about him, rather than self-publicising pretenders such as Truffaut.
A strongly tragic sense of economic and existential inevitability
philosopherjack29 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers
The first half an hour or so of Luciano Emmer's undersung Girl at the Window provides no hint of what the title might refer to, following a group of Italian immigrants as they enter Holland to work in a coal mine, negotiating the mechanics of arrival and integration - on the very first day, a sudden collapse seals off one of them, Vincenzo (Bernard Fresson) with the supervisor Federico (Lino Ventura), triggering a remarkable series of scenes in which their air supply gives out, sounds of approaching rescue recede, and even the ebullient Federico has little specific hope to offer. But suddenly, after several days, they're freed after all, and with little further reflection, the two men set off for Amsterdam, with the object of buying some female company. Emmer provides a rich portrait of the red-light district, emphasizing the language difficulties that many movies gloss over, and including a matter of fact depiction of a gay bar; Federico in particular is depicted as ravenous for booze and for women, spending his hard-earned money with an abandon which seems like its own kind of airless confinement. The film's structural freshness continues as the two men part ways (the film then focuses mainly on Vincenzo, who forges a sort of connection with Else, played by Marina Vlady, despite the two being barely able to communicate the simplest thing to each other), their paths meeting up again later, and again diverging. But these expansive aspects coexist with a feeling of fate closing in, symbolized by a recurring shot of the world receding into a tiny square of light as the miners descend into the depths. Overall, the film conveys a strongly tragic sense of economic and existential inevitability, but its final note is a resigned, jocular one, a small tribute to the spirit that allows such men to keep pressing on (albeit that this may only leave them more open to exploitation).
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