The Long Absence (1961) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by teamgal ★★★★ 2

  As is their wont, the script by Marguerite Duras and Gérard Jarlot deals with memory, but this time couched in a straightforward narrative. Although dealing with the weight of the past, there are no disruptions in the film's chronology. Henri Colpi's direction perfectly mates the camera to the words on the page, teasing out every ounce of pathos in the material. In its production, UNE AUSSI LONGUE ABSENCE harkens back to le cinema de papa, but it also calls to mind the more radical tendencies of Clouzot, Resnais and Antonioni.

  Palme d'Or Winners, ranked

  1961, best of

• Review by Kosta Jovanović ★★★½

  Duras as a screenwriter continues her exploration of memory, which was conceived with the Resnais trip that was Hiroshima Mon Amour. With her HMA collaborator, then editor, now director Corpi, she creates a more linear, grounded story, of significant emotional weight. A woman encounters a amnesiac drifter, whom she believes is her husbands, lost in war many years ago. So determined is she in finding the clear answer that the tramp's privacy is invaded, and he is bombarded with precious things from their potentially shared past. Dancing to sonatas, reciting poetry and tasting wine galore! We as viewers never find the concrete answer, whether the wandered found out his memories or is he really the husband, such is Marguerite's trope, but as usual it is not of utmost importance. What is of value, however, is Vali's dealing with grief, lingering recollections, longing and how her Theresa goes from stoic to broken.

• Review by Joe ★★★★★

  this fucking destroyed me I was weeping for like the final 30 mins

• Review by Reto Hochstrasser ★★★★

  A very calm and confidently staged drama about the aftermath and consequences of the Second World War. Valli and Wilson are outstanding in the lead roles. I also really liked the long takes and the wonderful and multiple use of a jukebox..
  Very sad.
  Winner of the Palme d'Or 1961.

• Review by ristubasan ★★★★ 4

  A Marguerite Duras screenplay beautifully staged, consistent in focus on melancholia. Apart from the accolades it received upon release, I've discovered it also features on a list of 100 films favored by Akira Kurosawa and compiled by his daughter in 1999, a year after his death, from their conversations about film, in 'A Dream Is A Genius', which appears never to have been published in English (but here is the list with commentaries in English translation: www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145935).

• Review by Adriana Scarpin ★★★★

  Uma Tão Longa Ausência estreava há 60 anos no Festival de Cannes.
  Marguerite Duras sempre lidando com o tempo, aqui literalmente perdido, é quase anti-proustiano na falta de memória, o mais interessante é que isso se transmutou na própria história do filme, largamente esquecido para um ganhador de Palma de Ouro.
  DVDRip no MakingOff.

• Review by evilbjork ★★★

  This is one of Henri Colpi's only directorial efforts. He was mainly an editor and his eye for aesthetics really comes through. He's edited some amazing movies, and although this isn't as great or experimental as his edited work, it's cool to see the multiple dimensions of someone working in film.

• Review by omid58kh ★★★★

  در فستیوال کن سال شصت و یک این فیلم به همراه ویریدیانا برنده‌ی نخل زرین شد
  از قضا هر چقدر فیلم بونوئل پرخاشگر و ناسازگار و برونگرا بود این یکی آرام و تسلیم و درون‌نگر است
  آنری کولپی تدوینگر دو اثر شاخص رنه ( ماریان‌باد و هیروشیما ) فیلمنامه‌ی مارگریت دوراس _که همچون هیروشیما عشق من روایت‌گر عشقی‌ست که بازیچه‌ی زمان و فراموشی شده _ را استادانه کارگردانی کرده است
  کاراکتر مرد یادباخته ( با بازی به‌یادماندنی ویلسون درشت اندام ) گویی سن و سالی به قدر سال‌های پس از فراموشی دارد و کار ثابت روزانه‌اش قیچی کردن و «درآوردن» عکس آدم‌ها از اوراق نشریات است ( این اشارتی ست هوشمندانه ؛ مرد تنها که از گذشته‌ی خود کنده شده…

• Review by reener ★★★★

  Where most seem to flop utilizing the expansive privileges that widescreen offers especially in small domestic dramas, as in tradition it's usually reserved for very big pictures like sword and sandals, westerns, musicals and the like, this does not. It also seems Colpi directed this like the editor he is, nurturing numerous long takes, quick temporal jump cuts, clever illusionary compositions and so on. This is on the tail end of what was once chic, the 50's craze of psychological exploration, with amnesia it often proceeds in the realm of a detective of the mind, snooping around hoping to spark history all back the way it once was, a postwar attitude. Long Absence favors it in a more mystical vein,…

• Review by K. ★★½

  Поделив в 1961 году Золотую пальмовую ветвь с "Виридианой", "Столь долгое отсутствие" кануло в безызвестность и даже Criterion Collection так и не обратил внимание на этого лауреата Каннского фестиваля. Награждению старомодной французской мелодрамы с утомительно тягучим темпом на фоне бушующей в то время Новой волны трудно найти другого оправдания, кроме как принять за попытку уравновесить скандальность фильма Бунюэля.

• Review by Oscar Lau ★★★½

  Winner of 1961 Palme d’Or at Cannes (tied with Viridiana), The Long Absence suffered from the same fate the title stated: largely forgotten over the years and only restored and released in Japanese Blu-ray until recently, it certainly deserves a reassessment. Written by Marguerite Duras straight after the success of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and directed by Henri Colpi, the film took a more straight forward narrative and suffused in an atmospheric melancholy of loneliness. The fragmented memory lane attached to wartime trauma in Hiroshima Mon Amour is extended to the condition of amnesia and the loss of identity as embodied by the amnesiac tramp (subtly acted by Georges Wilson), but the soul of the film belongs to the somber…

• Review by Raniaaa✨ ★★★½

  That was insanely heartbreaking...I don't know why I didn't see it coming.