Bonjour Tristesse

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) is producer/director Otto Preminger’s widescreen adaptation of the provocative best-seller by Françoise Sagan about a jaded 17-year-old (Jean Seberg) who wreaks havoc when she begins manipulating her playboy father’s love life. David Niven as the careless roué and Deborah Kerr as the elegant new object of his affections also share the screen with cinematographer Georges Périnal’s stunning color vistas of an idyllic French Riviera and more melancholy black-and-white views of a lovely but chilly Paris. Georges Auric contributes an appropriately bluesy score, supporting Preminger’s influential take on the lives of the rich and reckless.