Of course these two people are destined to fall in love. But “The Horseman on the Roof” wisely delays the inevitable; it's as coy as “The African Queen” in the way its two lead characters share adventures and danger while denying, to each other and to themselves, that a strong attraction is growing between them.
Pauline was 16, the daughter of a country doctor, when she married her husband, who was 40 years older. Now she wants to return to the quarantined areas of France, where the cholera epidemic lays waste whole villages, to find him. Angelo comes along, to aid and protect her, and their quest is told in scenes of action, adventure and fascinating historical detail.
The most memorable visuals in the movie involve the epidemic--its victims, the panic it inspires, and especially the carrion birds that stalk fearlessly among the dead and dying. (At one point Pauline is attacked by a bird, and observes, “They don't fear men since they have started to eat them.”) There are scenes here that reminded me of similar moments in “Restoration” (1995), another lavishly produced period film about a world in the grip of disease. At one point Angelo pauses in a village to drink from a well, and is attacked and nearly killed by the villagers, convinced that he is a well-poisoner. In another scene, a mayor's elegant dinner party is reduced to anarchy by the merest suggestion that someone at the table might be contagious.
Eventually, still seeking her husband, Pauline voluntarily goes into quarantine--into a vast makeshift hospital set aside for the dying and their loved ones--and Angelo follows her. The scenes here are fearful and touching, and we learn a little of the crude medical resources, mostly based on ignorance, that were being used against cholera. Not much was known about how germs spread disease, but in one scene, after the characters have possibly been contaminated, they rub alcohol on their skin and set it briefly alight, to kill the bacteria.
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