Rider on the Rain headlines Bronson, yet it’s not really his character’s story. But before we get too far afield, let’s concentrate on his Bronson picture. That one needs a Blu-ray, and so do the films that followed Rider on the Rain: The Deadly Trap (1971) with Faye Dunaway and Frank Langella, And Hope to Die (1972) with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Robert Ryan, and Wanted: Babysitter (1975) with Maria Schneider. In the ’60s, Clément turned to co-productions that threw together stars of various nationalities and aimed mainly at the English-language market, such as the superb cat-and-mouse thriller Joy House (1964) with Delon, Jane Fonda and Lola Albright. This excellent craftsman is best known, at least in the US, for the humanist war film Forbidden Games (1952) and for one of actor Alain Delon’s two early breakthroughs, Purple Noon (1960), the first film version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Rider on the Rain kicked off a final string of four terrific thrillers from director René Clément. Rider on the Rain ( Le Passager de la pluie) As “trash”, however, they proved sophisticated enough that we could use more of their like today. Rider on the Rain and Cold Sweat, which both cast Jill Ireland (Bronson’s wife) in supporting roles, belong to a Golden Age of internationally co-produced Euro-thrillers of the late ’60s and early ’70s that combine pulp storytelling with stylistic elegance and intense emotion, and which were largely dismissed as trash by contemporary critics. Now released on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber are two Charles Bronson movies from 1970, looking better than they have in pretty much forever.
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