User reviews

This movie is typical of the seventies in terms of gloominess and desperate atmosphere, it could have been made by Andre Cayatte - LA RAISON D'ETAT and a strange and disturbing and full of untold elements are here to puzzle audiences minds. Yves Boisset and Jacques Deray also gave us ESPION LEVE TOI and UN PAPILLON SUR L'EPAULE, and Henri Verneuil did the same with I COMME ICARE, nearly same kind of topics. Not for all audiences for sure, not today's - 2024 - audiences. They don't make films like this anymore. This feature is riveting, full of suspense and surprises, despite its low pace. Bruno Cremer excellent and the female character convincing too.

...and stay behind the scenes.A bizarre cast gathers French actors(Chabrol's favorite ,Michel Bouquet,Bruno Cremer,Pierre Santini ,Henri Serre -remember Jim in "Jules et Jim"?-) ,an actress who was also the script writer,under another name,and American stars such as Joseph Cotten and Dennis Hopper.Plus Donald Pleasance in a three-minute appearance.

Because of a passport,a woman is involved in a story she does not understand at all (the same goes for the viewer).The plot is too diffuse,the stakes too vague to successfully drag the audience.Hints at the third world , its cheap workforce and nukes are not convincing,even if the picture of the newspaper on the dead body is impressive enough.And the title is pretension itself.

It is always a great pleasure to see the excellent, charming, great actor Michel Bouquet. Unfortunately, he does not have a main role, he appears very little. But as much as it appears, it's more than effective. The main role is Bruno Cremer, another sacred monster, very natural, as in all the films I've seen him in, here in the skin of a journalist caught between two political forces, pursued, chased. Other good actors are gathered in this film, also smaller but equally excellent roles, Donald Pleasance, Gabriele Ferzetti, Dennis Hopper, Joseph Cotten. The revelation of the film is the life partner of the director Claude D'Anna, the beautiful Marie-France Bonin alias Laure Dechasnel. Co-author of the script and dialogues with Claude D'Anna, Marie-France Bonin in the role of Hélène Lehman creates the most believable and convincing character, that of the woman who falls completely innocent victim, she enters the whole story absolutely by mistake. It's a thriller, a bit static, not at all alert, but worth seeing. The best scene is the final one, in which Hélène is stabbed in the train station and then lies dead on the platform with a blood stain on her chest, which can be seen through a newspaper placed on her body by a passerby.