Cannes Classics: “24 Hours in the Life of a Woman” by Dominique Delouche

The Cannes Classics program winds up this evening at 8pm with the screening of a restored print of Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Dominique Delouche. Made in 1968, and expected to premiere at Cannes that year, the film also concludes the Festival’s salute to the 40th anniversary of those historical events. Adapted from a novel of the same name by Stefan Zweig, it is the tale of a “brief encounter” between a wealthy young woman and a German deserter from the First World War.

Dominique Delouche addressed the audience, “Forty years ago, I would have to say that I have long forgotten all that and of course I hold no bitterness or regrets from that period. I have done other things since; I made two more works of fiction before I settled into a niche of dance and music documentary making. You could say that I found my place. And that it is just as well that I did not show my film at the Festival forty years ago because I was going against the current. You will understand as you watch the film, an intimate portrayal that would have been a solo riding a bumpy wave. I might have been booed for not being politically correct.”