Where the classics are powerless “Girl in Blue Velvet” in the respectable filmography of British director Alan Bridges looks like a “white crow”. Having made a name for himself on television novelizations of classical literature, fondled by the jury of the Cannes festival for the adaptation of the novel by the popular English writer Leslie P. Harley “The Wage Worker”, in 1978, he suddenly takes up a topic that at all times was considered, at least, dubious. Love stories between a man not of the first youth and a teenage girl have always been perceived by society very ambiguously. But, since there is nothing more seductive than the forbidden fruit, the attempts of artists of different countries and peoples almost never stopped. He could not resist the temptation and Bridges.
To implement his idea, he went to France, where there was almost no fear of strict British censorship. In addition, the path there was already thoroughly trodden by his compatriot David Hamilton, who worked hard on melodramas about first love exclusively on the continental side of the English Channel. The reputation of Bridges as a very serious director allowed to attract to the project the stars of European cinema of the first magnitude: Michel Piccoli and Claudio Cardinale. The role of the young seducer went to Lara Wendel, who by that time had time to star in the most probably scandalous film of the 70s “Maladolescenza”. This may have been the director’s biggest mistake. The scandalous halo brought by the young actress outweighed all Bridges’ attempts to show the tragedy of Europe crumbling under the blows of fascism. The impossible love between an elderly Jewish surgeon and the 13-year-old daughter of an Italian aristocrat was supposed to become an allegorical illustration of the collapse of the old world, and turned into a self-contained and provocative story, which everything that happens outside the relationship between Conrad and Laura practically does not concern.
The convulsive attempts of the French elite to hide from the war, spending time in thoughtless entertainment on the Riviera; the atmosphere of dancing on the deck of the Titanic; the unwillingness to listen to the voices of those who faced the “brown plague” in reality; the meaningless winning reports of the newsreel – this is what Bridges sought to show. But he was a hostage of the means he had chosen for this show. The prism, created from the forbidden feeling of an adult to a teenager, voluntarily or involuntarily, absorbs all the rays directed into it. It is impossible to see anything that is happening outside. Just what's inside.
Outside are the last days of relative peace and false prosperity. Inside is the burning feeling against which education and principles rebel. And in between – Lara Wendel, who is no longer destined to get rid of the image created in “Maladolescenza”. And this “between” makes the work of Piccoli and Cardinal meaningless. Whatever and how they do in the frame, everything flies into the void. It is not possible to fit history into the historical context fully, to reach for the classical literature so beloved by Bridges - even more so. There remains a private tragedy of an unhappy lonely man, for whom the stars simply came together unsuccessfully. The tragedy, which the director brought to the screen tactfully, somewhere even in English is prim and dry, but from that it does not respond in the soul with anything - only with equally dry and prim reasoning.
Trying to link the traditions of Dickens and Thackeray close to him in spirit with the relaxation of the 70s of the XX century, and even recreating the atmosphere of the 40s, Bridges finally became confused in his goals and methods. Therefore, the film did not have any success. Except that he proved that the story of “forbidden” love can be told quietly, calmly and without any scandal. But the proof of this will interest only those few who are interested in the history of cinema as such, and not exclusively its most significant pages.