Return from the Ashes
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
In the winter of 1945, on a train bound for Paris, a small boy kicks monotonously at the outside compartment door of a crowded compartment--and then opens the door and jumps from the train. His mother howls in anguish, an unnamed passenger pulls the brake cord, the conductor comes and escorts the distraught mother to an empty compartment in the next car--and everyone else in the compartment wonders why one fellow passenger, a woman, sat mute and motionless throughout the entire shocking episode. And then someone notices the concentration-camp tattoo on her right forearm. The fact of the matter is that Dr. Michele Wolf (Ingrid Thulin) has seen--and experienced--such horrors that a little thing like a little boy jumping off a moving train to his death looks like the spilling of milk in comparison. And not a man or woman on board could possibly dispute that--especially not a Gentile.Michele arrives in Paris, books a room under an assumed name, and then calls the number of her old home. Her husband, Stanislaus Pilgrin (Maximillian Schell) picks up the phone and says hello, but Michele does not answer. And on the other end of the wire, Stan's companion, Fabienne Wolf (Samantha Eggar), Michele's stepdaughter from a previous marriage, urges Stan to hang up.Michele goes up to her room and recalls the years that brought her to this pass. She met Stan before the outbreak of war in Europe. He was much younger than she (thus making her what is today called a "cougar") and made his living, such as it was, as a professional chess player. Michele, as she would later admit, "bought" him--and Stan always resented having to take money from Michele, just as he resented having to live from prize to prize off his playing.Dr. Charles Bovard (Herbert Lom), a plastic surgeon at the hospital where Michele is on staff as a radiation oncologist, disapproved of the match, recognizing exactly the sort of man Stan was and is: a gigolo. He soon had reason to worry about far more momentous things: the Nazis overran the Maginot Line and occupied Paris. Soon they subjected all the hospitals to new employment regulations, which affected Michele directly, because she is Jewish. Stan offered to marry Michele in order to give her an identity apart from being a Jewess--but on the day of her wedding, a Nazi patrol arrested Michele and took her away.Now in 1945, Michele introduces herself first, not to Stan, but to Charles Bovard. She confesses to him some of the horrors she endured--including prostituting herself to the camp guards in exchange for rations in excess of starvation rations. Charles can and does understand her having to do what she needs to do in order to survive--but he is not sure about her plan to re-enter Stan's life. Nevertheless, he performs a reconstructive procedure to make Michele look as near to her old (pre-Holocaust) self as the consummately skilled Charles can manage--and then Michele allows Fabienne to see her at the hotel, this although Fabienne fails to recognize Michele for who she is.The reason for this failure is simple: Michele was reported dead in the camps. But she was never so declared--because under French law, dating back to the Code Napoleon, no one is declared dead until a coroner has a body to examine. This actually creates a problem for Fabienne and Stan: Michele is, quite simply, the surviving heiress of a large portion of the private wealth once owned by thousands of Jews who died in the camps--300 million francs' worth. If Michele could be declared dead, Fabienne would then inherit--but the law is clear: no body, no claim.So when Fabienne tells Stan of meeting a woman who looks remarkably like Michele at her hotel (recall that this is Michele, registered under an alias), and Stan meets Michele in her hotel and does not recognize her, he makes a shocking proposal to her: that she pose as Michele long enough to establish an identity, then feign her death so that the 300-million-franc legacy would be released. In return she would collect a "finder's fee" of 30 percent.Charles is shocked as Michele decides to play along long enough to see whether Stan will actually recognize that she really is Michele. Eventually Michele does reveal herself to Stan, who is only half willing to have her back, and to Fabienne, who, quite simply, hates her guts for coming between her and Stan. Michele, of course, establishes her claim to the massive Jewish legacy, but the tensions in the household rise to a breaking point, and Fabienne prepares to leave.But on her last day, Fabienne challenges Stan to undertake a plot to murder Michele by tricking her into opening a wall safe rigged with a gun. At first Stan refuses--but that night, Fabienne takes her last bath, and also takes champagne and barbiturates, a potentially fatal combination. Stan pumps Fabienne for a few more details on how to make the plot work--and then drowns Fabienne and then rigs the bathroom door to make it appear that Fabienne locked herself in and deliberately took an overdose.Michele, as Stan expects, takes the news badly and blames herself for Fabienne's death. Stan loudly tells the police investigators how worried he now is for her mental health.A few months later, Stan leaves town, telling Michele that he is going to Brussels to play in a chess tournament. Where he really goes is to a Paris suburb, which is part of Fabienne's plan. But there is another complication of which Stan is unaware: Charles comes to see Michele on the night of the tournament and quarrels with Michele over her continued enabling of Stan. Michele orders him out--and at that moment, Stan, who has made enough of a scene at the Paris suburb where he has gone that multiple witnesses would swear that he was in that city, has gotten enough of a moment alone to call Michele and trick her into opening the rigged safe.Michele agrees to open the safe to retrieve what she thinks will be a small present Stan bought, in anticipation of his victory. Stan waits a long time, then in an attack of cold feet, calls out to Michele four times. Then he hears a single gunshot, and hangs up.He then comes back home and finds Michele lying on the floor of the library, apparently dead. He completes the last part of the plan: disconnecting the gun, wiping it of fingerprints, placing it in Michele's hand, and dropping it on the floor--a classic "throwdown." Then he calls the police--but when he turns back to the library, he notices that Michele is no longer lying on the floor. Returning to the library, he is suddenly surrounded by two detectives, Charles Bovard--and a very much alive Michele.What has actually happened is this: Michele quarreled with Charles--but when she told Charles to leave, Charles opened the outer door of the foyer--and then closed it again. He intended to go back into the house and apologize, but before he could reopen the inner door, the telephone rang. Charles waited a decent interval, and then walked in on Michele, who asked him to wait, because she was still on the telephone. She moved to the library, and Charles waited just outside--until Stan shouted Michele's name four times. Charles stepped in, Michele turned toward Charles--and Charles saw the rigged gun. He rushed forward, shoved Michele aside--and the gun fired, harmlessly, putting a round through the doorway into a far wall. Shortly after that, the telephone went dead.Now recalling this, Michele tells Stan that she now understands his totally amoral attitude. The detectives then take Stan away--and Stan wryly observes to himself that "the simple closing of a door has brought me to the guillotine." Michele and Charles remain behind, sadder but wiser.

Review: "Return from the Ashes" is such a film.
Just let me wet your appetite by saying that Maximilian Schell plays a young amoral polish guy who seduces a French, older, wealthy widow, played for real by a great Ingrid Thulin.
When Schell asks her to marry him, she laughs it off as a surprisingly conventional request but he means it saying "At this time is not convention but defiance" So he marries the older Jewish woman...that's all I'm going to tell you about the story.
Samantha Eggar, beautiful and skinny gives a powerful performance of seductive evilness.
In a flash of incredible foresight, I recorded this gem as I watched it for the first time (maybe like 2 years ago...) The signature music has a waltzy, hypnotic cadence that completely draws you in, & a fascinating story unfolds in "post-war Paris", shot in appropriately atmospheric black & white.
I'd never even heard of Ingrid Thulin before -- someone on here mentioned her character, Michele, as "middle-aged" - that's not the impression I got.
Michele is a jaw-droppingly gorgeous, dazzling blonde Swede{?}, who was married to a much older man, with a daughter.
Ingrid Thulin is wonderful as Michele, combining just the right balance of high intellect yet vulnerability - very believable central character.
Herbert Lom & Samantha Eggar also give stand-out performances.
I'm completely amazed that this incredible film has never "made it to video"....
This is a rare beauty of a film.
The film is a character study, and a masterful thriller.
The star ( the beautiful Ingrid Thulin) looks off in a "thousand-year" stare.
The camera pans back, and you see the number tattooed on her arm.The film is shot, masterfully, in post-war Paris.
The Doctor returns to work, and her Husband (Maximilian Schell,in a career-defining role), hires her to impersonate his wife, whom he believes to be dead.The gorgeous Samantha Eggar, slinks around the house.
The film continues with some nail-biting, and the conclusion is just fine.I will scour my TV listings, and pray it comes back on!.
Once upon a time, before the giallos and the slasher films took over, there was an undercurrent of clever thrillers ...
Ladies and gentlemen, RftA is a stunning thriller which will keep you enthralled from the expositionary opening to the wonderfully complex plot developments.
Hard to believe it was 40 + years ago I sat in a darkened theater enraptured by the clever plot with more twists and turns than you could believe.
Ingrid Thulin, Samantha Eggar and Maximilian Schell pull out all the stops but they make you BELIEVE the lurid goings-on.
Too bad movie makers can't look at these old classics and learn how to pace and plot a good thriller..
I haven't seen this movie in over thirty years, since high school, but it stands out vividly in my memory.
I hope this isn't one of the lost films that we keep hearing about.
This film has haunted me right from the start of its release in 1965, thanks to the top players, the tense plot, the effective direction by J.
But most importantly (the play of) Samantha Eggar and the melodramatic role she plays in the film are the main reason of my lasting interest in this film.
One of those excellent films that has never been released on video or DVD.
The first time I watched this there were only 2 other channels and both were showing programs I hated at that particular moment, so I ended up watching this film by default.
I was treated to a beautiful, haunting film that featured great performances by Herbert Lom, Samantha Eggar, Maxmillian Schell and Ingrid Thulin.
If cable ever gets tired of endlessly re-running "Jaws", "The Breakfast Club" and "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" (Excellent films but shown 5 nights a week) and happens to air this true gem, be SURE you see/record it.
I saw this film YEARS ago.
I never forgot it and at one point, I tried to find out the name of it and was directed to another film.
I suspected when I read the plot on the channel guide that this was the movie.Set in flashback in pre-war Paris and in the present in post-war Paris, the story concerns a doctor, Michele, (beautiful Ingrid Thulin) hopelessly in love with Stanislaus, a chess-playing roué, excellently played by Maximillian Schell.
During the time she's gone, her husband becomes involved with her now grown-up albeit unstable stepdaughter Fabienne (Samantha Eggar).
After the war ends, and Michele doesn't return, Fabienne and Stan assume she's dead.
However, because of the laws in France they can't get their hands on her money.The truth is that Michele is alive, but had to go to a sanitarium after the war to recover from her horrendous experiences in the camp.
She's scarred and aged, and when she finally returns to Paris, she stays in a hotel and turns to an old colleague, Charles (Herbert Lom) to fix her up.
When Fabienne spots what she thinks is a Michele-lookalike (actually Michele), she comes up with a plan to have her stepmother return from the dead, with the imposter taking a cut.A really good movie, very intriguing, with good performances all around and excellent photography.
I'm so sick of being burned by TCM's ratings - four stars for trash and two stars for a fine movie like this (not all the time, but occasionally).Highly recommended..
I have only seen this film once or twice, and it's been four decades ago.
It is a sharp little murder story, with a clever scoundrel (Max Schell) who plans to make a real killing - a once in a lifetime shot at a fortune.Schell is a first rate amateur chess player.
He happens to meet Ingrid Thulin, a Jewish medical technician who was married before the war to an older, wealthier man.
During the war she was in a camp, but she was lucky enough to survive.She is vulnerable now, and she falls for Schell's polite, and then increasingly tender concerns for her.
But her home life is harsh - she only has her step daughter (Samantha Egger) who hates her as a woman who supplanted her mother.
Actually Thulin is nice enough to share her house with Egger.Schell sees the set-up as a golden opportunity.
He woos Thulin, and marries her, much to the suspicions of her close friend.
This effects Thulin, who is always just on the borderline because of her war experiences.
And at that point, I will leave the plot line for the reader to seek out and see the film.It turns out (I won't say how) Schell does not really count on the close friend affecting his plans.
And that was the final reason I enjoyed the film.
I have always been a fan of Herbert Lom. Ever since I saw him in THE LADYKILLERS, GAMBIT, A SHOT IN THE DARK (and the other "Pink Panther" films he popped up in), I have enjoyed his menace, his mania, and his remarkable acting skills.
Except for GAMBIT (perhaps - in one scene he briefly shows menace), Lom usually played dangerous men to cross.
In this film he finally played a decent guy.
A great film..
Why is it that films that you really love are never shown on the television?
I remember this film was considered pretty risque for 1665.
It used to be shown on tv all the time and was inevitably given two stars, when it is in fact a four-star movie.
It is inconceivable that there is not plot summary here, so here goes:Michelle, a currently single middle-aged medical doctor with a young daughter [already daring for the time], encounters the young fortune hunter Stanislaus in a casual meeting and makes him her boy toy.
Michelle happens to be Jewish in Nazi-occupied Paris.
When the Nazis do their thing, gentile Stan marries her in a moment of bravura that belies his true character.
Several years after the war ends, she turns up and reunites with Charles, her former colleague at the hospital.
Charles performs some plastic surgery, then she runs into Stan, who has taken up with Michelle's beautiful and still somewhat girlish daughter Gabby.
Stan sees the striking resemblance and asks "Mme. Robert" if she will impersonate his supposedly late wife because French law won't give Gabby access to her mother's assets without a dead or alive body.
Last time I knew it was going to be shown was when the Gulf War broke out and it never aired.
The plot, the actors, everything about this down to the black and white film was excellent.
The title refers to the heroine's adjustment to life and former loves after imprisonment in a concentration camp.Ingrid Thulin is a Jewish doctor living in Paris at the outbreak of the war, and Maximillian Schell is her ambitious, chess-playing, Polish paramour.
When war is declared he finally asks her to marry him despite her being Jewish.
It takes place while another doctor, Herbert Lom, is standing nearby.
Lee Thompson, uses far too many gigantic close ups, as if this film were designed for the television screen.
The makeup underscores what for any perceptive viewer doesn't need underscoring.On Thulin's return from the concentration camps, her eyes have been turned into two black holes and her hair dusted with flour.
However, Lom, who still loves her, restores her to at least a semblance of her former beauty.
She still can't bring herself to contact Schell, now living in Paris with Thulin's step daughter, Semantha Eggar, from a previous marriage.
Lom loves Thulin, but Thulin loves Schell, who is shacked up with Eggar and who may or may not have EVER loved Thulin, to whom he is still married, although he's convinced she's dead.It get even MORE complicated.
-- the money that should go to her step daughter, Eggar, is being withheld by the French government.
So Schell and Eggar meet Thulin and are struck by the resemblance to Schell's wife, still thought to be deceased.
They try to enlist her aid in squeezing the money out of the government by having Thulin pretend to be Schell's wife.
I hope you're following all this.So all Thulin has to do, Schell insists anxiously, is pose as his wife "for a short time -- a RELATIVELY short time", forge a few papers in her handwriting, little technicalities like that.
Both Schell and Eggar soon reveal themselves to be scurrilous weasels, just out for the money.
Thulin, for some reason, finally reveals her true identity and Schell is the consummate manipulator.
All those years I've WAITED." It would be funny if Schell played it that way, but he does it straight.Schell prefers Eggar AND the money, and Thulin now is merely in the way.
But I'll get off the plot at this point.Among the more interesting scenes is the one in which Schell welcomes Thulin (her real identity now restored) to their former residence.
I must have achieved my goal, however drunk I became, because I notice I'm no longer in Skopje.Ingrid Thulin is a pretty woman but he features suggest intelligence rather than the beauty of a fashion model.
What good would that talent do Arnold, stuck in movies like "Predator"?
Samantha Eggar delivers the goods.Actually, the movie turns into a rather ingenious thriller towards the end, once that irrelevant mixed identity nonsense is gotten out of the way, but it's all written and directed so clumsily that the mystery is drained of life..
I agree that it has some first-rate acting by Ingrid Thulin as a concentration camp survivor still smitten with her wastrel husband after four years of hell, Samantha Egger as her homicidal stepdaughter and Maxmilian Schell as the penniless scoundrel both women crave.
But from the symbolic opening (a child falling off a speeding railway train while Thulin looks stoically on) through the climactic get-rich-quick scheme, the film is unrelentingly grim.
And in the end, the characters (aside from Herbert Lom's likable doctor) are not only unsympathetic but don't make much sense..
A film noir classic.
Written in classic theatrical play/film style of Agatha Christie.
Excellent performances by Maximillian Schell and Samantha Eggar illustrates why they can be called stars.
Ingrid Thulin shines in a truly convincing way, what a talent.
Schell and Lom both set their person bars a little higher in this one..Bottom Line: Just Find It And Watch It..
At the time this made me think the movie was a slightly highbrow gore thriller of the "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" or "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" stamp - if not far, far worse.
Seeing the film years later .
Lee Thompson was the producer-director, this would-be suspenser plays like an Anatole Litvak cast-off.
French female X-ray technician (Jewish and widowed, with one stepdaughter) is separated from her second husband on their wedding day by the Nazis; in 1945, having survived time in a concentration camp, she meets up with him again, but he doesn't recognize her and asks if she'll pose as herself so he can collect on her fortune.
Ingrid Thulin's strong lead performance nearly holds the film together for much of the way, even if she far outclasses this crackpot material.
I knew "Darling" and "The Servant" but I had never heard of the one I liked best: the theme from "Return from the Ashes".
Much later, when I finally saw the movie, I realised how perfectly that lilting melody married with the film."Return from the Ashes" works despite credulity being stretched to breaking point along the way.
The true quality of this film is not revealed from a reading of the plot.
The movie plays far better than it reads.Shortly before WW2 in Paris, Michelle Wolf, a doctor played by Ingrid Thulin meets a Polish refugee, Stanislaus Pilgrin played by Maximilian Schell.
When the Germans capture Paris, Stanislaus – in his self-confessed, one gallant act of his life – marries Michelle, who is Jewish, to stop her being deported by the Nazis.
But she is sent to a concentration camp anyway.Years later, Michelle returns to Paris under an assumed name.
Although she is reacquainted with Stanislaus and her stepdaughter, the beautiful Fabi, played by Samantha Eggar, they believe that she simply bears a strong resemblance to the Michelle they knew.
They want her to play Michelle in a complicated plot to retrieve funds that have been frozen since the war.
After many developments, the movie still has enough energy left to deliver one final twist at the end."Return from the Ashes" boasts three of the most attractive stars you are likely to see in one movie – Ingrid Thulin, Maximilian Schell and Samantha Eggar.
For me, Ingrid Thulin is the standout.
It's surprising Hollywood didn't seek her out more often – possibly she would have made one of the great Hitchcock stars – in an interview, he once singled her out as the epitome of the kind of sexiness he admired, especially in her work for Ingmar Bergman.Despite a "Vertigo" like sequence when Michelle is coached to play what is in reality herself, "Return from the Ashes" does not seem overly influenced by either Hitchcock or film noir.
The dramatic use of black and white and the moody quality of the film is due to J.
I first saw this film as a young girl.
A haunting mood permeates the simple, yet effective scenes--one can almost feel the sense of trauma and tragedy of Post War France.The ending is wonderfully satisfying and even somewhat shocking.
This film makes no apology for itself--it presents us with a concentration camp survivor who is still in love with a narcissistic user, and we go on from there, somehow suspending all sense of disbelief in the face of masterful acting..
Ingrid Thulin is released from a Nazi concentration camp to find that gigolo husband Maximilian Schell has shacked up with her stepdaughter.
What ensues is a roundelay of lies, fraud and murder plots, mostly sprung from the demented mind of Samantha Eggar, giving a great performance as Thulin's neglected stepdaughter, a sociopath who cares only for herself.
Eggar & Schell are a match made in hell, but Thulin, very much a survivor, does not fall easily for their shenanigans.
Lee Thompson, who keeps the film virtually entirely indoors, adding to the feeling of claustrophobic dread.
There are fine performances by the three principles and an excellent supporting role for Herbert Lom (as Thulin's wily colleague).
A female doctor lives a prosperous life, partially because she earns a lot of money, partially because her late husband left her well-provided for.
Her late husband also left her with a step-daughter, for whom she feels little affection or concern.
While the imprisoned woman goes through a living hell, her husband and step-daughter do not wear out their respective knees with praying for her health and safety...This is a suspenseful thriller which projects a remarkable sense of decadence, what with the three protagonists being caught up in a "huis clos" worthy of Imperial Rome at its most dissolute and pernicious.
(What makes the situation even worse, is that these are three people supposed to help and support each other.) The movie also boasts an impressive performance by Maximilian Schell, as a clever parasite who would sell his own mother to the glue factory.However, there are serious problems with this movie.
Imagine, say, an adventure movie where a cast of Bulgarian, Swiss and Dutch actors play French fishermen fleeing to Greece in order to escape the vengeance of Portugese gangsters - that wouldn't work too well either, would it ?Secondly, and more importantly, there is the concentration camp theme.
From a purely narrative point of view this wasn't a wise choice either : the concentration camp theme is like a black hole which bends or swallows every other motif, every other development by the sheer weight of its awfulness.So no, I can't recommend "Return from the ashes", although it's certainly the kind of movie that tends to stick in the memory.