Rating: 
Summary: Cliche, French style
Review: The drifter, the young one nobody understands, the free spirit, the girl you should never fall in love with...Puh-lease! This has been rehashed so many times in songs and movies of the 50s, 60, and 70s that by the time this came out, it felt like a relic from a museum.
Rating: 
Summary: VAGABOND
Review: The film opens on the scene of a bare vineyard, it's winter, and a worker is collecting vines off the ground after pruning. He suddenly comes upon a woman, sprawled dead in the frost covered ditch, nothing but an old dirty blanket on her back. Her face is contorted with pain from the cold she suffered. Her hair looks almost gray from being frozen.
The police come to investigate, she's got no identification with her.
But as the film progresses we learn her name is Mona, short for Simone. In flash backs we see her traveling like a leaf on the wind, never staying in one place for too long, hitching rides, and pitching her tent. Bumming cigarettes, and getting water and bread (sometimes dope) from kind strangers, a few she gets to know, but they never really figure out who she is. But, they agree as they talk to the camera, she's someone they'll never forget. The film takes place during winter, Mona says she likes to travel then because there aren't that many people out, and it's easier to get a ride. Those who she meets, are mostly good, but some bad. She experiences the perils of a young woman traveling alone. Hunger, cold, rape... She isn't a naive street urchin, but a gritty character, tough and defiant. I found Mona, so endearing and painfully haunting. I became more and more sad, to know she had died. And when that tragic moment came, I couldn't help but cry a little. Sandrine Bonnaire made her seem so real. And I love how the movie was shot. Told in flashbacks, by the people who had known her, however briefly. They speak directly to the camera. A very powerful film, very poignant and absolutely haunting. Filmed in Nimes, France. In the stark landscape of mid-winter. Anges Varda's masterpiece. Sandrine Bonnaire won the Cesar award for best actress. Even though it's sad and ends (and begins) with tragedy, I am definitely going watch it again. This film deserves no less than five stars!
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated. (Leonard Maltin, you surprise me!)
Review: The information booklet in the package quotes Varda comparing her story with Citizen Kane's. It's an unjustified comparison. Contrary to her statement, what made Kane interesting was NOT how Welles told the story, but the story itself and the universal human theme it evoked. In Vagabond, Mona remains enigmatic to the end, diminishing our sympathy for her. Nor do we see others' lives really touched by her. The trifling bit of exposition of her "motivations", as well as her few insightful observations, seems countered by her lack of communication with others. In the end, she seems self-centered and lazy, preferring the suffering of poverty to the suffering of roots. That could have been the basis of a very good story, but that potential has not been realized.
Rating:
Summary: haunting and unforgettable movie
Review: This movie is about a drifter who perished on the winter road, starved and frozen. Once in a while, we come across something that we can not shake off. This is it. The image of the woman wandering around will haunt you for a long time. If you like this movie, read the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer, Into The Wilderness.
Rating:
Summary: An isolating, disturbing and terribly moving tale
Review: This movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It poses many questions to the viewerlike, "What is total freedom?" and "Is everyone isolated from one another?". Sandrine Bonnaire captures the Vagabond with a strange cool and shows the viewer a face that truly anyone can become. The story is about a Vagabond, who to many has no name, but leaves a massive impression. We first see her dead and frozen, nothing but a faceless figure that means nothing to anyone. Then as we begin to get glimpses into her life from people she met along the way we begin to give her a face and the face we give her is all too clear. It is the face of an isolated, scared, lonely person who is lost and unable to help herself. As a viwer we are unable to have a rockhard understanding of whether or not we care for the Vagabond. We see her pain so clearly that perhaps we are understanding, yet we also see a selfish person who thinks only of herself. When the film ends we are left wondering how many vagabonds we have come across and whether or not we are one ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: An isolating, disturbing and terribly moving tale
Review: This movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It poses many questions to the viewerlike, "What is total freedom?" and "Is everyone isolated from one another?". Sandrine Bonnaire captures the Vagabond with a strange cool and shows the viewer a face that truly anyone can become. The story is about a Vagabond, who to many has no name, but leaves a massive impression. We first see her dead and frozen, nothing but a faceless figure that means nothing to anyone. Then as we begin to get glimpses into her life from people she met along the way we begin to give her a face and the face we give her is all too clear. It is the face of an isolated, scared, lonely person who is lost and unable to help herself. As a viwer we are unable to have a rockhard understanding of whether or not we care for the Vagabond. We see her pain so clearly that perhaps we are understanding, yet we also see a selfish person who thinks only of herself. When the film ends we are left wondering how many vagabonds we have come across and whether or not we are one ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: a very interesting film.
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film. This film begins with the discovery of a dead young hobo woman in a ditch. The rest of the film is a retrospective of the events leading to her death as told to the police by people who had seen her. The film style reminded me of the Japanese film "Rashomon." The original French title of the film is "Sans toit ni loi" which means "Without roof nor law" The Criterion DVD has no special features.
Rating:
Summary: Over-rated and tiresomely boring film
Review: You'd think this film would at least appeal to our sympathy. Unfortunately, it's unbearably slow, so that every time she's even remotely near a ditch, you hope that something comes by like a stray football player or an eighteen-wheeler and kicks her in. This film is sentimental, horribly filmed, and punctuated with dialogue that is far from engaging. Read Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles before you see this dishonest thing. The only sympathy this film evoked was for myself - I felt sorry that I wasted two hours watching it.
| 
