Sundays and Cybèle

Sundays and Cybèle
Original French poster 1962
Directed by	Serge Bourguignon
Screenplay by	Serge Bourguignon Antoine Tudal Bernard Eschassériaux
Based on	Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray by Bernard Eschassériaux
Produced by	Romain Pinès
Starring	Hardy Krüger Nicole Courcel Patricia Gozzi
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Distributed by	Davis-Royal Columbia Pictures
Release date	12 November 1962 (1962-11-12)
Running time	110 minutes
Country	France
Language	French

Sundays and Cybèle is a 1962 French film in , directed by Serge Bourguignon. Its original French title is Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray (Sundays in Ville d'Avray), referring to the Ville-d'Avray suburb of Paris. The film tells the tragic story of a young girl who is befriended by an innocent but emotionally disabled veteran of the French Indochina War. The film is based on a novel by  [fr], who collaborated on the screenplay.

Plot[]

Pierre suffers from amnesia after a war-time accident in which he might have killed a young Vietnamese girl while crash-landing his stricken plane. His nurse, Madeleine, lives with him in a low-key but potentially romantic relationship. When Pierre sees Cybèle, a young girl in distress as her obviously loveless father is dropping her off at an orphanage, he befriends her. Each of the two is lonely, childlike, and in need of a supportive friend. Eventually, he pretends to be the girl's father, which allows her to escape the locked orphanage for a day, and he shares every one of his Sundays with her for months.

Pierre conceals his friendship with Cybèle from Madeleine, but she eventually finds out, and tells Bernard, a doctor who has a romantic interest in her. Bernard assumes the girl to be in danger, and notifies the police, who adopt the same assumption.

Pierre has nothing to give Cybèle for Christmas, so he accepts her facetious challenge to bring her the metal rooster from the top of a Gothic church near the orphanage. While Cybèle falls asleep, awaiting Pierre for their Christmas together in the snow-covered park's gazebo, the former pilot musters the nerve to climb the 300-foot steeple. With his knife as a tool to unscrew the rooster, he brings it down. As he returns to Cybèle, with the metal rooster and his knife in his hands, the police arrive and shoot him dead to "protect" the child, whom they imagine to be in danger. Cybèle awakens to the horror of seeing that her friend is dead and cries in anguish.

Cast[]

• Hardy Krüger as Pierre
• Nicole Courcel as Madeleine
• Patricia Gozzi as Cybèle/Françoise
• Daniel Ivernel as Carlos
• André Oumansky as Bernard

Awards[]

Sundays and Cybele won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.^[1] The nominations for writing and scoring were for the 1963 Academy Awards the following year.

See also[]

• List of submissions to the 35th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References[]

External links[]

• Sundays and Cybèle at IMDb
• Sundays and Cybèle at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sundays and Cybèle: Innocent Love? an essay by Ginette Vincendeau at the Criterion Collection