Last Love

Jean Stelli was the French Stahl or Sirk, but without the former’s talent and the latter’s genius. His field was melodrama and his claim to fame was THE VOILE BLEU, the blockbuster of the Occupation years which saw Gaby Morlay take care of all the children the shameless mothers left to their own devices;there are elements of that film in DERNIER AMOUR when the husband helps the poor damsels in distress without asking anything in return (the widow and the singer).

Stelli’s precedent movie, CINQ TULIPES ROUGE, had left melodrama for a whodunit thriller during the Tour de France (bicycle race )and was probably Stelli’s most enjoyable effort. DERNIER AMOUR comes back to melodrama with a capital Françoise Giroud’s script is cliché itself: the flashback,in particular, comes at the most awkward moment: they talk about the impending WW2 for a while, but it seems that the war never happened: the greybeard hints at Hitler and that’s it. It is as if the director, towards the ending of the film, suddenly appreciated how dour it all was and desperately attempted to enhance the effort by last-minute devices such as the “flash-forwards” when Annabella is driving through the night. —IMDb