Die Qual vor dem Ende

The Mouth Agape (French: La gueule ouverte) is a 1974 French drama film directed by Maurice Pialat. It depicts, in a cinematic realist fashion, a woman going through a terminal illness and also dealing with the tumultuous lives of her husband and son.[1] It was one of the least commercially successful of Pialat's films.[2] It was the third film of the ten that he directed before his death in January 2003. It is also known under the titles The Gaping Mouth and The Gaping Maw.

The film stars Monique Mélinand, Philippe Léotard, Hubert Deschamps, and Nathalie Baye in the main roles. Néstor Almendros, the Spanish cinematographer known for working with the Nouvelle Vague directors François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer, collaborated with Pialat for the first time on The Mouth Agape.[3] The title is a poetic reference to the open mouth position sometimes found in corpses.[2]