When a wealthy German engineer (Gustav Rudolf Sellner) causes a car crash that kills his son, local newsmen peel back the onion to find that he may or may not have taken part in a massacre in Greece during WWII. They don't wait for any confirmation and print their story anyway. Maximillian Schell directed this haunting morality play looking into the ambiguities of guilt, shame and history. What is and isn't important in the past gets blurry as time goes on. Sellner is excellent in the title role (he's lost his license and can't drive, hence the film's title), oddly likable even as you come to realize that he may indeed be guilty. Schell infuses the film with perhaps one too many artful touches (flashbacks, dreams, slow motion), but it doesn't dull its impact. There's one scene of several dignified women at a dinner table discussing, almost gleefully, their memories of war. Peggy Ashcroft, Lil Dagnover and Elisabeth Bergner are among the women. It's an odd scene in an odd, shocking movie.
Review of The Pedestrian
