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The Crimson Curtain
The Crimson Curtain
7.5
/10
464 Ratings

THE CRIMSON CURTAIN

Le rideau cramoisi

Directed by Alexandre Astruc
France, 1953
Short, Drama

Synopsis

Albertine is the daughter of a bourgeois couple who house a young officer during the Napoleonic wars. Newly promoted, the officer is treated by the family with a cold politeness bordering on indifference…until one evening, to his astonishment, Albertine seizes his hand under the dinner table.

Synopsis

Albertine is the daughter of a bourgeois couple who house a young officer during the Napoleonic wars. Newly promoted, the officer is treated by the family with a cold politeness bordering on indifference…until one evening, to his astonishment, Albertine seizes his hand under the dinner table.

Our take

The Crimson Curtain was the debut feature of film critic Alexandre Astruc, renowned for his theories on auteur cinema, and his coining of the phrase the “camera-pen”. Starring a 20-year-old Anouk Aimée, it is a rewarding experiment in telling a narrative story exclusively through visuals.