Cinema
Malpertuis
Harry Kümel · 1972
Synopsis
A young sailor wakes up a prisoner in Malpertuis, his family's vast, labyrinthine house. His uncle Cassave, an old man versed in the occult, has gathered all his kin there around an inheritance with strange conditions. Little by little, the house yields secrets from very far away, and those who try to leave it die one after another in mysterious ways.
Context
The film adapts Jean Ray's novel published in 1943, and was for Flemish production of the time an out-of-the-ordinary project: Orson Welles and Susan Hampshire at the top of the bill, the British cinematographer Gerry Fisher, a score by Georges Delerue. Shown in competition at Cannes in May 1972 in a shortened version, edited by Richard Marden for the distributor, it was poorly received there. Kümel obtained the right to re-edit a Dutch version himself, longer, the only one he acknowledges.
Who it is for
Two versions: the Cannes one, of about a hundred minutes, in English or French, and the director's own, longer, in Dutch, restored in 4K.
Prizes and reception
Poorly received at Cannes in 1972, rehabilitated in its author's version, restored and reissued since.