RAPTURE Blu-ray Review

John Guillermin's forgotten Rapture is a complex gem of a film.  Every piece of the film works masterfully, and yet it had mostly fallen off the face of the earth until Twilight Time licensed it for release on Blu-ray. There are a number of reasons that the film might have disappeared. It luxuriates in tricky morality. The main characters each ensconce themselves in unhealthy relationships, whether is is father-daughter, lovers, or otherwise. It seems to me that the film was simply so far ahead of its time that it had no place in 1965, but thank goodness it has reappeared and is ripe for critical rediscovery.

The lead actress, Patricia Gozzi, plays an ephemeral woman-child searching for her place and discovering her sexuality a little bit younger than 1965 audiences may have been ready for. The girl, Agnes Laubard, begins the film as a fifteen year old girl whose obsessions are those of a much younger child. She plays with dolls as though they are her only friends, since she is isolated from other children her own age. Her father believes her to be mentally deficient, but what she lacks is not the capacity to understand, but the capacity to relate, and she lacks someone to whom she can relate.

Her father, a stern doctor played by Melvyn Douglas, has lost faith in the workings of the civilized world and has retreated to a rural farm following the early death of his beloved wife. He sees his daughter as a reminder of his wife, but in a melancholy way, rather than as the last remaining flicker of the life he once cherished. He unwittingly infantilizes her, perpetuating her fantasies of childhood. That is, until he opens up and allows her to use his wedding suit to create a scarecrow for the garden, which she then anthropomorphizes and falls in love with to nearly disastrous ends.

This is when a very young and dashing Dean Stockwell shows up as an American sailor on the run from the French police. Earlier in the film, the doctor witnessed a paddy wagon crash, and saw Stockwell's Joseph emerge tussling with a gendarme. They wrestle for a moment before Joseph casts off the gendarme who hits his head on a rock and dies. On the lam, Joseph dons the scarecrow's suit and appears to Agnes during a storm, Agnes instantly decides that her scarecrow has come to life to be with her, and the plot thickens.

Rapture is a film full of characters making poor decisions. Typically these kind of stories can be written off because they lead the audience to distance themselves from the characters. There is little relatability in characters with whom you constantly disagree, however, Agnes' love for Joseph is so profound and earnest, it is hard not to identify with her on some level as a romantic. Joseph repels Agnes' advances for a long time, but eventually succumbs, and the film's morality gets even cloudier when they run away to Paris to live as man and wife.

The idea of a fifteen year old girl running away to get married to an older man is an uncomfortable one today, but back then it was a scandal. This was an age when the sexuality of teenagers was much more under the covers, and Patricia Gozzi's Agnes becomes quite forthright with her desires one she decides that Joesph is the man she's been looking for. If it weren't for this complicated love story, I think the film may have been more of a success, but as it is, it makes for incredibly compelling viewing.

Apart from the story, Rapture is technically superb. The cinematography by Marcel Grignon is unbelievable, his crisp black and white photography of the French sea coast is absolutely stunning. His use of swoops and interesting camera angles also helps to convey Agnes' confusion and her state of mind in the way that only images can. Grignon was a very busy working DP, and this makes me interested to seek out more of his work. The only other films of his I've seen are Shaft in Africa and Walerian Borozczyk's The Beast, quite a varied CV. In addition to the photography, Rapture features a splendid score from Georges Delerue, which is dripping with romance and thankfully available on this disc as an isolated audio track.

Twilight Time's decision to release Rapture on limited edition Blu-ray is a winner. The film deserves far more praise than it has received, and I believe the time for its rediscovery is now. This is a definite recommendation from me. Well worth the price.

The Disc:

As I mentioned above, Rapture is blessed with glorious cinematography and scoring, and both are treated extremely well by Twilight Time. The black and white photography is amazing, and the transfer supports it beautifully. This is among the finest black and white presentations I've yet seen on Blu-ray. Simply stunning. Delerue's score also gets an uncompressed treatment and sounds beautiful is its original mono. The A/V on this disc is incredible, and another slam dunk for Twilight Time.

Extras are sparse on the disc, as dictated by Twilight Time's licensing agreements, but the major extra is worthwhile. The essay by Julie Kirgo once again delivers credible and valuable insight into the film and helps to contextualize its appearance and subsequent disappearance from view. It also discusses the sexual politics of the film as well as the fate of Patricia Gozzi, a talent who chose to leave the screen too soon. I look forward to her essays as much as the films themselves at this point. Well done.

Buy this disc. It should be essential viewing, and hopefully now it will be.