Return from the Ashes

Return from the Ashes (1965)

The water warm... the champagne chilled... the music soft... then the daydream ends... and the nightmare begins!

A Jewish woman, Dr. Michele Wolf, interred in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII returns to her Paris home after the war's end. She's unaware that her husband, the handsome gigolo and chess master Stanislaw Pilgrin, has been having an affair with her stepdaughter Fabi in her absence.

Date of release
1965-11-16
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (32)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Thriller, Drama
Director
J. Lee Thompson

Casting

Interesting facts

Return from the Ashes is a 1965 British thriller film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Ingrid Thulin, Maximilian Schell, Samantha Eggar and Herbert Lom. It is based on a novel by French crime writer Hubert Monteilhet, adapted for film by prolific screenwriter Julius J. Epstein.

Production

The novel was optioned by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who ended up selling the rights to director J. Lee Thompson, whose films Clouzot admired. In May 1963 Thompson listed the film as among his projects. Samantha Eggar had been under contract to J Lee Thompson who had planned to make a film of The Living Room with her; this movie was made after her appearance in The Collector.

In October 1963 the Mirisch Company announced that the film would be one of six films which the company would make over four months at a total cost of $17 million. The other films were A Shot in the Dark, The Satan Bug, Bandoola, The Confessor, and The Dazzling Hour (which became Kiss Me Stupid). In November Julius Epstein was reportedly working on the script.

In March 1964 Hedda Hopper announced that Sue Lyon would star. Filming was pushed back – in June 1964 the Mirisches said the movie would be part of a slate of 14 films made over 18 months worth $51 million (others including Hawaii, The Hallelujah Trail, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, A Rage to Live, Bandoola, The Confessor, The Law and Tombstone, Cast a Giant Shadow, What Did You Do in the War Daddy, A Garden of Cucumbers, Return of the Sev…

In November 1964 it was announced the stars would be Maximilian Schell and Gina Lollobrigida. Lollobrigida was replaced by Ingrid Thulin, and sued the production company for $1 million. Samantha Eaggar was under exclusive contract to Thompson's production company.

The film was shot on the backlot of MGM's Elstree Studios. in February 1965. The sets were designed by the art director Michael Stringer. Thompson said he liked to move the camera "to accent the restlessness, the emotional strains of these people, who are highly strung and neurotic. For once, I hope, the camera will help create characters rather than just reflect them."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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