THE SALAMANDER / LA SALAMANDRE (1971)
Directed by Alain Tanner
127 minutes
The first great success of renowned Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner, THE SALAMANDER also represents one of his many collaborations with John Berger: between 1966-76 the pair made four films together (including Tanner's most famous, the 1976 feature, JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000). THE SALAMANDER begins with a succession of enigmatic images: a man is shown cleaning his gun; the gun goes off; furtively, a woman's face appears. From this mysterious opening, Tanner and Berger build a metaphorical scenario: two men, a journalist and a writer, are determined to discover the truth about this woman. Each uses his own weapons: documentary research in one case, boundless imagination in the other. But gradually, both courses of action prove futile. The beauty of the film lies in its capacity to develop a theme without ever belaboring its message: that reality outruns all efforts to grasp it. As played by Bulle Ogier, Rosemonde remains a definitive incarnation of post-1968 freedom.