The Visit (1964)

Not the M Night Shyamalan thriller but also something of a garish fairytale, this is the 1964 movie version of Friedtich Dürrenmatt's 1956 tragicomic play about a fabulously wealthy woman who, like The Count of Monte Cristo, returns to her childhood home to exact revenge, but unlike The Count of Monte Cristo she makes her past and her motives crystal clear, announcing an unsettling proposition at a dinner party thrown by the town in her honour: she will give the townspeople $2 million dollars if they acknowledge the injustice she suffered as a 17 year old and kill Miller, the man who put her 'in a family way' before conspiring to run her out of town — money corrupts is the main message, put simply, but in light of recent real-life retrospective litigations, there is other food-for-thought.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW