There is a reason this film won an Academy Award when it came out in the US: Yes, it was mundane; yes, it was a simple love story about unsophisticated people; yes, once yuh clean it - there ain't much to it; but...I remember vividly seeing this film when it came out and the emotions it evoked.
The film itself was sophisticated and the story line was anything but linear. What distinguished this pretty gem, was the way the story was told, not just with flash backs, but with flash-forwards: each scene was shown several times, sometimes shot from a different perspective, sometimes exactly the same. But each time you saw the scene, you had a different perspective because you knew more about the back-story or about the characters. The film builds its climax on the memory of the viewer, so that by the end, you understand how these two people have evolved into love and why.
I can't think of a film-maker of the period who understood the value of repetition in advancing his story, except perhaps, Ophuls. This film deserves to come out in US/Canadian format.
