Good story, Not enough for a whole film

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie is a miscast for both Signoret and Delon. I can understand that Signoret, needed the money and took this option. THere is nothing wrong with that. As for Alain Delon, who performed in "Cercle Rouge" made in the previous year, by Jean-Pierre Melville. This is an almost a replay. And a bad one. Mr. Pierre Grasnier Deferre is a second (if not third) rate French Director. I never read the novel by Simenon. I do not believe he is the culprit, but I admit I can be wrong. You want more lines. Here They are. Octavia Piccolo has a child and breast feeds him. The movie shows Virgin nipples. Pierre Grasnier Defferre never knew a virgin. Maybe he likes widows. Nothing wrong.

"La Veuve Couderc" comes on a disc that also includes one of Alain Delon's very best films, "Diaboliquement Vôtre"-- truly terrific suspense film. While "Le Veuve Couderc" is not nearly as good, as long as you're watching one of the films, you may as well watch the other. However, just be forewarned that "Le Veuve Couderc" is MUCH slower and may be too slow for some audiences.The film begins with a middle-aged woman (Simon Signoret) being assisted by a traveler (Alain Delon) to carry her new incubator back to the farm. He asks if she has more work and she hires him without knowing more about the man. The widow turns out to be a rather sad character with a sad past--though she doesn't dwell on this. She also has some in-laws that give her no end of trouble. What about Delon? See the film and find out more about the stranger.As I mentioned above, the film is pretty slow. It's well acted BUT perhaps the acting is, at times, a bit too muted. I would have loved some more energy in the film. This doesn't mean you shouldn't watch. It also didn't help that you didn't feel much connection with the characters.By the way, although you probably won't care, the history teacher in me was a bit annoyed because Félicie's hairstyle is NOT period--she looked to be from much later. It's a little thing but I am surprised they didn't catch this.

At the time ,French cinema was updating the rural thriller ,a genre which had begun in the late thirties/forties with such works as "Goupi Mains Rouges" "l'Assassinat du Père Noël" or "la Ferme aux Loups".The early seventies began with Granier-Deferre's "La Horse " (Gabin) and continued with another Granier-Deferre (this one) as well as with "L'Affaire Dominici" (Gabin) and "Les GRanges Brulées" (Signoret and Delon teaming up again).These movies from the seventies were more realistic ,more "precise in their depictions of rural life than those released earlier."La Veuve Couderc",like one of his precedent movies ("Le Chat" also feat Signoret) was first a novel by Georges Simenon.In France ,people were amazed to see Delon playing opposite Signoret ,but most of the actresses Delon played with in the seventies ,with the exception of Romy Schneider or Jeanne Moreau,were starlets.There was really a special chemistry between them which was not as effective in their later effort "les Granges Brûlées" .Both are well cast,Signoret as a strong middle -age peasant woman and Delon as the fugitive .Granier-Deferre helped pave a way to a new "Cinema de Qualité" which made us forget the pretensions of the new wavelet.

This film is set in 1934 in rural France. The bus we see at the beginning indicates Dijon as its destination, and indeed the credits show that the film was actually made in a place called Cheuge which is about thirty kilometres north east of the city and on a canal. The church of this village is instantly recognizeable and is seen quite often throughout the film. Dijon is in the "Côte d'Or" department (21) and forms the north part of the region of Burgundy. La Veuve Couderc lives alone in a farmhouse and is at loggerheads with her inlaws who live on the other side of the Canal. One of the inlaws spends some time with her and some time with the other side. Enter an escaped prisoner ( Delon ) under the name of Jean Lavigne who helps Couderc carry an egg hatcher to her farm. She then invites him to stay for a few days there and gives him work to do in the fields and on the farm. She also feels a certain attraction towards him. This suits him as it is a good hiding place. He also has a brief affair with a young lady from the family of the inlaws who has an illegitimate child. This annoys Veuve Couderc who is jealous. But the inlaws don't like Lavigne's presence at the farm, build up a case against him, denounce him to the local police who enter the farm at daybreak to "take him out". The film is an excellent portrait of French country life and also denounces the most abject side of the French character - that people are dishonest, hypocritical and ready to denounce you to the authorities - something we saw a lot of in Word War II when numerous French people denounced Jews and other undesirables to the authorities who treated them worse than the occupying Germans and deported them to Labour camps. Some people may well find the film slow and boring and quite honestly, if I did not live in France and know something about the country, I probably would. But I ended up liking it surprising enough. You really feel, hear and almost smell the Burgundy countryside. The theme music by Philippe Sarde is magnificent and I especially liked the music from Le Bal and the way the village dancers were filmed. As there are no comments on the film in IMDb, I assume it is totally unknown outside France or at least has not made an impression on anyone. The principal actors, Alain Delon and Simone Signoret, are nevertheless two of France's greatest actors. The final "shoot-out" also generates a certain amount of suspense. The fact that the film is slow-moving, the paucity of the dialogues etc etc probably help to explain why abroad the film is not too well-known. By today's standards, it certainly seems slow !