Rider on the Rain

The film opens with a Lewis Carroll quotation that suggests Mellie is like Alice in Wonderland. The setting is a rainy autumn afternoon at a small resort on the south coast of France. This framing establishes a dreamlike, unsettled mood for the events to come.

Mellie is newly married to Toni, an airline navigator who is away at work. Her isolation and vulnerability are established as she goes about ordinary routines. This setup makes the later intrusion feel more personal.

A strange man gets off a bus and seems to spy on Mellie from a shop window while she tries on a dress. The creeping sense of being watched foreshadows the danger to come. The sequence merges routine shopping with the omen of intrusion.

The man sneaks into Mellie’s house, ties her up, and rapes her. After she frees herself, she realizes he is still in the house, so she shoots him with a shotgun and kills him. The act marks a violent, defining escape from fear into a deadly response.

She drives the body to a cliff and tips it into the sea. On returning to the house, she says nothing to her jealous husband when he comes back. The secret she keeps will drive the ensuing investigation.

The next day at the wedding, an uninvited American named Dobbs speaks to Mellie. A body has been found and he claims she killed him, which she denies. This confrontation thrusts Mellie into a web of mistrust and rumor.

Dobbs sneaks into Mellie and Toni's home and questions Mellie roughly. Mellie begins to suspect that the rapist had business with Toni, perhaps drug related, and Dobbs is stubborn about the truth. They go to the bank, and she withdraws all she has, offering it to him, but he still wants the truth.

The next morning Mellie discovers the rapist's travel bag containing sixty thousand dollars. Her curiosity and fear push her to search for clues later that day. This discovery deepens the stakes and hints at a larger conspiracy.

Mellie stealthily enters Dobbs's hotel room and uncovers evidence that he is a US Army colonel on a covert mission. Dobbs himself appears and reveals that a woman at a Parisian restaurant has been apprehended for the murder. The threads of truth begin to pull Mellie toward an international chase.

Following the Paris lead, Mellie boards a plane to Paris to uncover the truth. Her pursuit leads her to a Paris restaurant, then to the workplace of the arrested woman's sister, a brothel. The search intensifies as danger closes in.

In the Paris brothel, Mellie is subjected to intense questioning by three criminals who want answers. Dobbs follows and forcefully intervenes to rescue her from harm. The narrow escape points to a broader cover up.

Taking Mellie back home, Dobbs reveals that the corpse is not the rapist's but another man's. The rapist was an escapee from a US military prison who had attacked three women before Mellie. Mellie finally understands the motive behind the crimes, but the mystery remains.

Mellie tells Dobbs where she tipped the body, which is found by police frogmen. Dobbs decides the case is closed and chooses not to inform the police about Mellie or the $60,000. The moral ambiguity of truth versus secrecy deepens.

In a closing Hitchcock homage, the rapist is named Mac Guffin. This meta reveal caps the mystery with a wink to cinema history.