Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (1959)

Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (Dangerous Liaisons 1960) is a very early Roger Vadim film, released in 1959. It is based on Choderlos De Laclos’s scandalous 1782 novel.

Roger Vadim is one of the greatest and one of the most despised of French film directors. Critics who doted on the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) directors regarded Vadim with contempt. He was a skilful director who made polished professional movies with style and wit. Directorial skill, polish, professionalism, style and wit were things that enraged the devotees of the Nouvelle Vague.

To compound his already numerous sins Vadim has no interest in making overtly political films. He had no ideological axes to grind. Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 is not about politics, and it is not about sexual politics in the way that feminists and ideologically driven film critics understand the term. Vadim is interested in a much more important subject - love. It’s about how love turns to hate and hate turns to love, it’s about the joys and sufferings that men and women bring each other. It’s about love considered as a game. It’s the most dangerous game of all, and therefore the most exciting. It’s certainly about sex, but it’s more interested in the exquisite pleasures and pains that treating love and sex as games can bring.

Valmont (Gérard Philipe) and his wife Juliette (Jeanne Moreau) are expert players in these games. Their favourite games involve adultery and seduction. You cannot hope to understand this movie unless you realise that they are both predators. They are predators of a peculiar type - they hunt as a pair. They both participate in the hunts, and they both get equal pleasure from making the kill. Juliette is not a victim of so-called gender roles or gender expectations. She is a ruthless huntress.

Both Valmont and Juliette ignore all the established social, sexual, more and cultural rules. That is the theme of the movie - what if the game of love could be played without any rules? What if we freed ourselves from these rules? What if the only objective of the game was pleasure? Not just sexual pleasure, but the pleasure of playing the game.

Juliette is of course having an affair. Naturally she tells her husband all the details.

Valmont has his eyes on some promising prey, in the person of Cécile (Jeanne Valérie). Cécile thinks she is a sophisticated young woman of the world. She has two fiancées. She is however a mere child compared to Valmont and Juliette. They’re both going to enjoy this hunt.

Then even more promising prey appears on the scene - Marianne Tourvel (Annette Vadim). Marianne is a happily married young woman who is faithful to her husband. Valmont’s seduction of her will be even more exciting, for both Valmont and Juliette. Juliette loves hearing all the intimate details of the chase and the kill.

But even for expert players this game can be hazardous. That of course is its appeal. Without the danger there would be no thrill.

This movie has nothing whatever to do with gender. Juliette is not rebelling against traditional gender roles or gender expectations. Both Valmont and Juliette are rejecting ALL moral, social and sexual roles. The original novel was written in 1782, which happens to be the year that the Marquis de Sade began his literary career. This is no coincidence. Both Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing the scepticism about moral rules that was increasingly popular among intellectuals. This was the beginning of a new attitude towards morality - that nothing mattered other than the pursuit of pleasure. They were not in revolt against bourgeois morality because bourgeois morality did not yet exist, for the very good reason that the bourgeoisie did not yet exist. Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing what was essentially an aristocratic contempt for moral rules.

This is quite evident in the movie. The outlook of Valmont and Juliette is essentially aristocratic. The movie actually has a strong Sadeian flavour. It has quite a bit in common with some of Jess Franco’s later de Sade-influenced movies such as Cries of Pleasure.

Of course by the time the film was made bourgeois morality did exist. Valmont and Juliette are certainly rejecting that morality, but their rebellion is from an aristocratic standpoint, not a modern ideological standpoint. This is not a feminist film, although modern critics twist themselves into knots trying to apply anachronistic feminist interpretations to movies of the past.

And Vadim upsets modern critics and film scholars by not actually condemning bourgeois morality. The villains in this movie are the ones who reject such rules and pursue only their own pleasures.

All of the performances are impressive. Gérard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau have the more showy roles but Jeanne Valérie and Annette Vadim give beautifully judged subtle performances.

Like a lot of Vadim’s movies this one confuses modern critics by ignoring ideology. A complex intelligent provocative movie. Very highly recommended.

Le Boucher (1970)

Le Boucher (The Butcher) is a 1970 Claude Chabrol film.

Chabrol was associated with the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague). He was a fanatical admirer of Hitchcock. You’ll often find him described as the French Hitchcock. Having seen half a dozen of his movies I have no idea why anyone would see him as a French Hitchcock. In the films of his that I’ve seen Chabrol’s approach does not even slightly resemble Hitchcock’s.

That’s not intended as a criticism of Chabrol. Just because he admired Hitchcock does not mean that he wanted to slavishly copy Hitchcock’s techniques. Chabrol had his own ideas on how to make movies. Whether or not you think they were good ideas is up to you, but they were his own ideas.

Hitchcock’s approach to suspense was invariably to give the audience vital information denied to the protagonist. That creates fear by making us fearful on behalf of the protagonist - we know he is in danger but he doesn’t know that.

In this movie we know only what the protagonist knows. We discover things as she discovers them.

Helen (Stéphane Audran) is the school headmistress in a small French town. At a wedding she meets the local butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne). They flirt in a tentative way. A day or so later they have dinner together. There’s obviously some attraction there, and they like each other. Helen is not the sort of woman who jumps straight into bed with a man. Popaul is not the sort of man who expects a woman to do that. He behaves like a perfect gentleman. They start to become fond of one another but they’re both taking things slowly. We slowly come to like both of them as well.

What I like is the way Chabrol focuses for so much of the movie on this slowly blossoming romance between Helen and Popaul. The unsettling elements are introduced in the background and appear to have no connection whatsoever with these two people.

We get a wonderful idyllic scene of the children playing in the schoolyard supervised by their pretty young headmistress. She obviously loves the children and they love her. This is a peaceful harmless sleepy little town.

Then we see the two black police vans pull up in the background, and the gendarmes have a police dog with them. A police dog always means something very bad - perhaps a missing child, perhaps a search for a body.

We find out, purely because one of the kids has heard this from his dad, that the dead body of a woman has been found in the woods. This has nothing to do with our two tentative lovers but we are now just a little uneasy.

The unease slowly builds as Helen discovers something that may be a clue or it may not be. We know no more about it than Helen does.

But we are getting worried. There are more murders.

There are a couple of lovely visual moments - the dripping blood scene is superbly done.

While it’s not a Hitchcock-style thriller there is an intriguing echo of Vertigo - the shots of the back of Stéphane Audran’s dead, focusing on her hair, mirroring those famous shots of Kim Novak in Vertigo. Given Chabrol’s fondness for Hitchcock it’s a certain that he added these shots as a playful reference. Chabrol liked playing cinematic games.

And Stéphane Audran is the Hitchcock Ice Blonde type, so it works.

This is very much a slow-burn thriller.

There isn’t much actual suspense, in fact hardly any. But there is a growing sense of dread. In that respect this movie perhaps functions more like a horror movie than a thriller.

Don’t think of this as a Hitchcock-style thriller. Just enjoy it as a Chabrol movie. It’s a very good Chabrol movie. Highly recommended.

The old Pathfinder DVD offers a perfectly acceptable 16:9 enhanced transfer. The availability of Chabrol’s movies in English-friendly versions has always been rather spotty.

I’ve also reviewed Chabrol’s fascinating but eccentric The Champagne Murders (1967) and the extremely interesting Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975).

Borsalino (1970)

Borsalino is a 1970 French gangster movie which was a major box-office hit. Which is hardly surprising, given that it stars Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo who were at that time the two most popular, most charismatic and sexiest male movie stars in France. When you add to this the fact that the period setting looks completely fabulous and there are lots of fistfights and gunfights this was about as close as you could ever get to a surefire commercial success.

The idea originated with Alain Delon (who produced the movie). He’d just had a hit with La piscine (The Swimming Pool) directed by Jacques Deray and he was keen to do another movie with Deray. Delon’s star power attracted international financing and Borsalino looks expensive because it was.

It’s the story of two small-time crooks in Marseille, Roch Siffredi (Delon) and François Capella (Belmondo). They meet when they beat the living daylights out of each other over a girl, Lola (Catherine Rouvel). Having beaten each other to a pulp they become firm friends, and criminal associates.

Roch and François are ambitious but at first they don’t really have a master plan. They just don’t like being pushed around by the crime lords of Marseille. They eliminate one of these crime lords and take over his operations, and they just keep eliminating rivals until they reach the top.

Roch and François are very different but both are charming and magnetic in their own ways. This is a gangster buddy movie and the differences between the two are (as always) a major factor in making it work as a buddy movie. Both Delon and Belmondo deploy their unquestioned star power and their established screen personas. Roch is super-cool and self-contained and rather moody and brooding, things Delon did extremely well. François is hyper-active and cheerful with a playful approach to life, things that Belmondo did extremely well.

There’s crime and corruption here but this movie takes no interest in the moral implications. Roch and François are bad guys but they’re super-cool and they’re very much the heroes of the story. They’re not rebels. They’re unabashed gangsters and they’re violent and ruthless. Nonetheless the movie is very much on their side, not for political reasons but because they’re super-cool.

The movie-going public loved this movie. Critics were less happy with it, seeing it as a case of style over substance. You can always rely on critics to miss the point. In Borsalino the style IS the substance. This is an exercise in cinematic style. This is pure cinema. Critics, being critics, love looking for political meanings and subtexts. There aren’t any here. This movie ostentatiously avoids such things.

The costumes are superb. The costumes for the two male leads reflect not just the differences between the two characters but the differences between the screen images of the two stars. Delon’s clothes are cool and ultra-sharp. That was Delon’s image. Roch wants to look like a gentleman. François wants to look like a big-shot gangster, which reflects Belmondo’s more flamboyant slightly neurotic image.

The production design is terrific and reflects these differences as well. Roch wants his living quarters to look like a gentleman’s apartment. François’ idea of interior decoration is to have paintings of naked women on the walls.

There’s a lot of fairly graphic violence but it’s done in a very operatic way, in fact in an almost Italian way. The murders (and there are lots of them) are reminiscent of the emerging Italian poliziotteschi genre. This was a Franco-Italian co-production. I have no idea how well it did in Italy but I imagine it did well. It manages to be in tune with the visually extravagant approach of Italian film-making of this era while still feeling very very French.

American gangster movies probably had some influence on this movie but the French had their own gangster movie tradition which this movie draws on heavily.

The two stars are absolutely at the top of their game and they play off each other superbly.

Borsalino looks gorgeous, has a reasonable story, it offers plenty of action and it has style to burn. Don’t overthink this movie. Just wallow in the style. Borsalino is highly recommended.

The Arrow Blu-Ray offers a very nice transfer. Extras include a worthless audio commentary that tries to impose 2020s ideologies onto the movie. In general audio commentaries are best avoided these days.

Un Flic (1972)

Un Flic (A Cop) was Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film. It’s sometimes described as a neo-noir but I’d be more inclined to see it as an existentialist crime thriller.

The opening sequence is extraordinary. It’s a very long build-up to a bank robbery. It was shot in a seaside town out of the tourist season. The streets are entirely deserted. The weather is bleak. It’s raining and there’s a driving wind. And there are these incredibly long vistas of sterile modernist architecture. The mood of alienation and utter emptiness is overwhelming. The robbers’ car (a big American car) appears to be the only automobile in the entire town. In fact, apart from the people in the bank, you could well believe that the town is uninhabited. The robbers are like dead men in a dead town.

Intercut with the robbery are scenes of a senior police detective, Commissaire Edouard Coleman (Alain Delon), driving through the streets of Paris in a police car and being called to various crime scenes. But the first crimes we see him investigating have no connection at all with that bank robbery.

The key details of the plot and the relations between the characters are revealed very slowly and very gradually.

This is a very minimalist film. We don’t get any backstory on any of the characters, we don’t find out how they come to be connected, we get only the sketchiest outlines of the plans of the criminals. We discover nothing of the motivations of any of the criminals. By the end of the movie all we really know about Commissaire Coleman is that he’s a cop. We’re told only what we absolutely need to be told.

Simon (Richard Crenna) runs a night-club and he’s also the leader of the criminal gang. He and Commissaire Coleman are friends although we have no idea how that friendship came to be. Cathy (Catherine Deneuve) is Simon’s mistress. She’s also Coleman’s mistress. We have no idea how this romantic triangle developed and we have no idea of the extent of these emotional attachments.

The gang is planning a much more ambitious heist, on a train.

Coleman has a lead that suggests that something criminal is going to take place on the train but he doesn’t know that there’s any connection with the bank robbery and he doesn’t know that Simon is involved in any way.

Eventually the police get a break and Coleman starts to put some of the pieces together.

What’s interesting is that apart from the main characters we see very few people at all. It’s as if the central characters are just actors on an empty stage set.

Everything in this film seems to take place in slow motion. There are two major heists and while there’s plenty of suspense there’s no sense of action or excitement. The build-up is extraordinarily slow and there’s virtually no action pay-off. At every point where you’re expecting action it just doesn’t happen.

Again all of this would appear to be deliberate. This is a heist movie but if you’re expecting anything resembling an action thriller you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. This movie has the feel of a stately European art film rather than a thriller.

The most notable thing about this movie is the extreme level of emotional detachment. The triangle between Simon, Coleman and Cathy involves all sorts of betrayals. Simon’s criminal career could be seen as a betrayal of his friendship with his friend Coleman the cop. Coleman’s determination to push ahead with the case without being swayed by his friendship for Simon could be seen as a betrayal of that friendship. Cathy’s affair with Coleman could be seen as a betrayal of Simon. Cathy’s involvement in Simon’s criminal activities could be seen as a betrayal of Coleman who is after all her lover.

But there’s no indication that any of these things matter to any of these three people. They don’t seem to be driven to any significant degree by either love or friendship. They also don’t appear to be driven by lust. The Coleman-Cathy relationship is curiously un-erotic. In fact there’s not the slightest indication of any real erotic attraction between any characters in this movie. At no point in the movie is there any emotional or erotic connection between any of the characters. Simon and Coleman are supposed to be friends but they behave like casual acquaintances. Coleman and Cathy are supposed to be lovers but the one time we see them together there’s as much emotion as you’d get between a high-class hooker and a client.

As a result the characters are more or less puppets. We see them doing things but we have no idea why they’re doing those things. Perhaps they don’t know. Perhaps they really are empty inside. My impression is that this approach is very deliberate. It’s one of the reasons I see this as an existentialist movie. The lives of the characters seem to have no meaning or purpose. There’s also more than a hint of absurdism. All of the characters are absurd and pathetic.

The train heist is a very very long very intricate sequence but it’s irrelevant to the plot. These criminals have already made an unrecoverable error by bungling the bank job, after which it’s inevitable that the police will catch them. This whole sequence conveys a sense of utter futility, of people doing very complicated things that are in fact meaningless.

All of which strengthens my conviction that this is very much an existentialist movie. I kept being reminded of Camus’ The Stranger. These are three people who are all very much alone. I think the title, Un Flic (A Cop), is very significant. Coleman is a cop. That’s all he really is. That’s all he’s got. He does his job efficiently and without emotion. If people let him down he discards them and moves on. The meaning of his life is that he’s a cop.


Some critics have fallen for the temptation to see this as a movie about problematic masculinity. In my view that says more about modern film critics and the obsessions of the 21st century than about the actual movie and the obsessions of the 1960s and 70s.

The performances are completely flat. Catherine Deneuve projects a kind of Hitchcock ice blonde vibe. There’s a bit of Kim Novak in Vertigo in her performance.

I’ve already mentioned the stunningly brilliant opening sequence. The train heist is elaborate but totally artificial in its clumsy use of miniatures (I like miniatures work in general but in this case it really is clumsy).

That’s not to say that I hated this movie. It fascinated me in its radical rejection of every convention of the crime thriller genre, and its radical and uncompromising rejection of every convention of movie-making. It’s not a thriller. It’s a remorseless exercise in absurdism, existentialism, alienation and complete aloneness.

This is not a movie for thriller fans. It’s not a neo-noir. This is very much a movie for fans of highly and coldly intellectualised European art-house movies. If that’s your thing then Un Flic does it very well. So, recommended with some caveats.

Joy House (1964)

René Clément’s Joy House (also released as The Love Cage, original French title Les félins) is based on Day Keene’s delightfully nasty little noir masterpiece Joy House. The movie has plenty of star power thanks to the casting of Alain Delon and Jane Fonda, Delon being a very hot property indeed in France at this time and Fonda a fast-riding star.

Marc (Alain Delon) had been living in New York but had to leave after a misunderstanding with big-time gangster McKean. Marc had seduced the gangster’s wife, after which Marc decided that New York was not a good place for him to be.

He’s back in France but Mob hitmen are after him. He ends up, penniless, in a mission which is largely supported by the eccentric widow Barbara Hill (Lola Albright). Mrs Hill is assisted in her charitable endeavours by her maid Melinda (Jane Fonda). We later find out that Melinda is not exactly her maid.

Marc gets a break when he’s employed by Mrs Hill as a chauffeur. Mrs Hill lives in a large house with just two servants, Melinda and now Marc. Melinda is very excited by the idea of having a man about the house.

Marc is broke but he doesn’t intend to stay that way. He has no concrete plans but ideas are starting to occur to him. Marc is accustomed to taking risks. He’s confident of getting what he wants.

Mrs Hill has an interesting past, particularly insofar as it involves her late husband. She is up to something and it involves Marc. Marc suspects that something is going on in Mrs Hill’s mind but he’s not sure how it could involve him.

Melinda may have plans as well. She certainly plans on getting Marc into bed.

It seems more than possible that Marc and Mrs Hill may end up in bed together as well, although the motivations of each of them have little to do with lust.

There’s a secret concealed in Mrs Hill’s house. It may be a threat to Marc, or it could be something that he can turn to his advantage.

None of these characters could be described as straightforward and honest. There are lies and deceptions and betrayals. They’re playing dangerous games - dangerous to themselves and others. It’s also by no means certain that there are only three players in this game.

Alain Delon is, as always, insanely cool. This is exactly the kind of character he played so well - very cool, possibly sinister, definitely dangerous, very sexy and very aware of his sexual power over women.

Jane Fonda is excellent. Melinda’s motivations are especially mysterious. She probably doesn’t understand them herself. She is however becoming very aware of her sexual power over men.

Lola Albright could easily have been overshadowed by two such major stars but she isn’t. She’s playing a woman who likes to be in control but knows that perhaps she’s not as completely in control as she’d like to be. She’s calculating, but with a certain emotional vulnerability.

There’s a bit of the femme fatale in both women, and quite a bit of the homme fatale in Marc.

This movie could be seen as an early neo-noir, an anticipation of later erotic neo-noirs like Body Heat and Basic Instinct. At the same time there’s a slightly off-kilter absurdist edge to it. It’s almost noir black comedy. It’s a movie about game-playing and the movie itself is a game.

When people think of French cinema in the 60s they tend to think of Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol et al. René Clément is usually dismissed as a relic of the past, and in fact was regarded that way at the time by devotees of the Nouvelle Vague. In fact Clément made a couple of movies in the 60s that are vastly superior to anything done by those Nouvelle Vague directors, including the absolutely superb Purple Noon (Plein Soleil).

Joy House is energetic, witty, playful, sardonic, visually inventive and very stylish. It’s also a great twisted psychosexual melodrama. It’s not quite an out-and-out crime thriller in a conventional sense but there are plenty of characters with criminal intentions. Clément may have been unfashionable at the time but here he’s at the top of his game. Very highly recommended.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray offers both English and French language options. It doesn’t matter which you choose. Both Alain Delon and Jane Fonda did their own voices in both languages. I think it’s fascinating that even in French Jane Fonda sounds so very Jane Fonda.

Quai des Orfèvres (1947)

Quai des Orfèvres is a 1947 movie directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, best known for The Wages of Fear and Diabolique.

Henri-Georges Clouzot doesn’t really fit neatly into a particular genre. There is a bit of a film noir vibe. Surprisingly perhaps it doesn’t have all that much in common with the French poetic realist movies of the 30s which are generally regarded as important precursors of film noir. Quai des Orfèvres is also a police procedural, and it’s a showbiz movie.

It’s a showbiz movie with the emphasis on the seedy sleazy side of the business. If you want to get ahead you might not have to be willing to sell your soul but you certainly have to be willing to sell your body. Getting ahead means making producers and promoters happy in the bedroom.

Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a popular singer in a theatre that appears to be a French equivalent of British music hall. Jenny is very ambitious. She intends to use her sex appeal to get to the top. How far she is prepared to go is debatable. She probably doesn’t know herself. She hopes not to have to go as far as actually sleeping her way to the top but we get the feeling that it’s an idea she wouldn’t dismiss out of hand. She’s certainly more than willing to be groped.

Jenny is married to her musical accompanist, Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier). He’s extremely jealous and possessive and it has to be admitted that he has some justification for not trusting his wife.

Their friend Dora lives in the same apartment block. There’s some kind of romantic triangle going on between these three but the nature of that triangle does not become clear until later. Dora is a photographer.

Jenny is hoping to sign a contract with movie producer Georges Brignon. It’s obvious that Jenny hopes to get the contract without actually sleeping with Brignon (although she’d be willing to do everything short of having actual sex with him). It’s also obvious that Brignon has no intention of giving her the contract unless she does have sex with him. Jenny gets herself into a very awkward situation.

There’s a murder. Jenny, Maurice and Dora will all be suspects at some stage. Inspector Antoine (Louis Jouvet) is shabby and seedy and doesn’t give the impression of being over-competent but he’s been a cop for a lot of years and he can be dogged.

The script will eventually throw a few curve balls at us.

The three key characters are neither overly sympathetic nor overly unsympathetic. They have their faults but they have their good points and when they behave badly their actions are usually at least understandable. Jenny is cheerfully amoral. Dora seems oblivious to conventional morality. Maurice is much more moral, but that doesn’t make him better than the two women.

There are several things that sharply distinguish this movie from Hollywood films of the same era. The endings of Hollywood movies of this era were very predictable since usually there was only one ending that the Production Code Authority was going to permit. But in a French film, unconstrained by the Production Code, you can’t make any assumptions about the ending.

It’s also much more sexually open than any Hollywood offering of that period. There are very strong hints that Dora wants to be more than just good friends with Jenny. The movie is quite open about the fact that Jenny slept around before her marriage. The movie does not suggest that this makes her a wicked woman. Dora is quite unembarrassed by the fact that much of her income comes from taking nudie photos of girls. There is no suggestion that there is anything shocking or shameful about this. All of these things are pretty much taken for granted.

There’s plenty of sexual tension without any actual sex, which is of course a very sound approach for the movie to take. Sex, sexual jealousy and thwarted desire drive the actions of the characters.

The police are also portrayed less sympathetically than in Hollywood movies. They’re unethical and sneaky and brutal and generally unpleasant.

The acting is uniformly excellent. I was particularly impressed by Suzy Delair whose performance is both vibrant and nuanced.

Quai des Orfèvres does not turn out in quite the way you might expect although there are certainly clues that point towards the actual ending. A very good movie. Highly recommended.

Kino Lorber’s DVD (they’re released it on Blu-Ray as well) offers an excellent transfer. This release confirms the company’s formidable reputation for atrocious audio commentaries. In this case we get endless lists of film credits for every bit part actor and assistant hairdresser involved in the movie.

But it’s a fine movie and the disc is worth buying for that reason.

Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975)

Innocents With Dirty Hands (Les innocents aux mains sales) is a 1975 Claude Chabrol thriller.

The setup is so conventional and chichéd that we never seriously doubt that this is deliberate and that Chabrol has some surprises up his sleeve.

Julie (Romy Schneider) is married to Louis Wormser (Rod Steiger). He’s much older than her, he’s a self-pitying drunk and he can’t perform in the bedroom any more. Julie meets Jeff Marlo (Paolo Giusti), a handsome young aspiring writer. Julie reveals her unhappiness and sexual frustration to Jeff. Jeff takes immediate steps to solve her sexual frustration problems. Julie tells Jeff how very unhappy she is. She has to remain married to Louis because he’s rich but she’s very tired of him. If only some solution could be found to her problems.

You know where this is leading, and indeed pretty soon Julie and Jeff are planning a little accident for Louis. It’s basically The Postman Always Rings Twice but set among the decadent bourgeoisie. And of course the basic story has been done countless other times.

The night set for Louis’ accident arrives. They have decided that it would be wise for Jeff to slip over the border to Italy for a few days.

The police think they have a pretty good murder case. There are however some odd gaps in the police case, and the viewer will certainly notice these odd gaps. Certain things are assumed to have happened, but there’s no real proof. We start to suspect that there’s quite a lot that we don’t know.

Julie also starts to realise that there were some very important things that she didn’t know. And still doesn’t know.

The big plot twist at the midway point isn’t going to surprise anybody and I don’t think it was intended to. It’s the only possible explanation for certain events. I don’t think Chabrol was overly interested in the plot twists anyway. He was more interested in the psychological consequences of the plot twists. It’s the emotional twists that matter, not the narrative twists.

And Chabrol is much more interested in what happens after that major plot twist - it’s the actions that the characters take in response to the revelation that makes the movie start to become much more engrossing.

There’s a certain detachment to this movie. Chabrol isn’t trying to present us with a hero or a heroine with whom we’re going to empathise. He views their actions dispassionately. Audience members will have to decide if the actions of the characters are justified, and whether justice ever gets done. The police and the examining magistrate and Julie’s lawyer aren’t really sure either how justice would best be served and the law doesn’t care much either way.

Julie’s lawyer doesn’t think it makes much difference if she’s telling the truth or not. She’s beautiful so she’ll be believed anyway. And truth is whatever people happen to believe.

Romy Schneider is perhaps the movie’s biggest asset. She gives a complex performance. Julie is a woman whose motivations tend to shift, depending on her emotions and her sexual desires.

Rod Steiger is less hammy than usual.

Sex is pretty important in this movie. Not just sex as sex, but sex as it affects the mind and the heart as well as the body. The two main characters struggle to deal with sexual desires with which they’re not always comfortable. Love and sex make us do things we don’t want to do.

This isn’t an action-packed thrill-a-minute kind of thriller. It’s much more cerebral. What keeps us interested is that we never know for sure what the two central characters will do next, probably because they also don’t know what they’re going to do next.

If this is the kind of thriller you enjoy then you’ll be happy with this psychological study of love, hate, sex, murder, revenge, forgiveness and jealousy. Innocents With Dirty Hands turns out to be not at all the movie that it initially promised to be. It turns out to be a lot more interesting and it’s recommended.

The old Pathfinder Pictures DVD (from 2003) is letterboxed. The transfer is not dazzling but it’s acceptable and if you want to see this movie then it seems to be the only English-friendly option.

Blue Panther (1965)

Claude Chabrol’s Blue Panther (the original title is Marie-Chantal contre Dr Kha) is a lighthearted 1965 eurospy romp, or at least that’s what you might assume.

It opens with a murder on a train heading for Switzerland. Then Bruno Kerrien (Roger Hanin), who claims to be an advertising man, meets Hubert de Ronsac (François Moro-Giafferi) and his pretty cousin Marie-Chantal (Marie Laforêt) in the dining car. Bruno gets jumpy when he realises he is being watched. He asks Marie-Chantal to do him a favour. He wants her to hold on to a piece of jewellery for him for a day or two. The jewel is a blue panther with ruby eyes.

Marie-Chantal senses some kind of intrigue here and that sounds like fun so she agrees.

Later on the ski slopes she encounters reporter who tells her he is in Switzerland in pursuit of a story about international espionage. She guesses that the blue panther is involved.

There are all sorts of shady characters at the hotel. And pretty soon there’s a murder. And Marie-Chantal makes a dying man a promise.

She now realises that she’s playing a dangerous game but she’s kind of excited. At least having people chasing you and tying to kill you isn’t boring.

The Blue Panther is of course the movie’s McGuffin. Marie-Chantal has no idea what its significance is and neither does the audience. But there’s a bewildering assortment of people who want that jewel. Some might be good guys but we figure that most are bad guys and there’s no way of knowing which are which. There are two Soviet agents, one of whom is a young boy. He’s the boss. There’s a guy who could be a CIA assassin. Another guy might be working for an African terrorist organisation. And there’s the mysterious Dr Kha, presumably a diabolical criminal mastermind.

Plus there’s Olga (Stéphane Audran). She could be working for Dr Kha or she could be a freelancer. And Paco (Francisco Rabal). We have no idea what his affiliation might be. He seems like a good guy but it would be dangerous to jump to conclusions.

Luckily Marie-Chantal is a judo expert. She also seems comfortable with handguns. As innocent bystanders caught up accidentally in espionage go she’s pretty competent. She’s a smart girl - she’s suspicious of everybody. She never panics. She’s breezily confident that she can outsmart all these spies. She behaves as if getting caught in the middle of a web of espionage is just one of those things that a sophisticated girl should be able to handle. And the spies find themselves having to dance to her tune.

Marie Laforêt really dominates the movie in an effortless fashion. It’s an odd detached performance but it’s intriguing.

This is a strange movie. It seems on the surface to belong to the eurospy genre but it doesn’t really. It’s more like Chabrol was embarrassed by having to make such a movie so he decided to approach it in an off-kilter mocking sort of way. It never develops the energy or the sense of fun that you expect in a eurospy movie. There is some violence but there are no action set-pieces. There’s no suspense. It’s the sort of movie you’d get if you asked an intellectual who despises spy movies to make a spy movie.

Chabrol was associated with the Nouvelle Vague and this movie has all the flaws that one associates with that movement. It’s more like an intellectual exercise than a movie. Chabrol was clearly trying to avoid doing anything sordid like making a popular commercial movie. And it’s self-consciously clever. If you enjoy clever-clever self-referential movies that deconstruct the genre and get all meta and play elaborate games with audience expectations then you’ll enjoy it. But this sort of thing has been done a lot more effectively. If you want to see this sort of thing done really well watch Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Trans-Europ-Express instead. It’s a much better and much more enjoyable movie than Blue Panther and it’s cleverer and wittier as well.

Blue Panther often gets compared to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise, made a year later. You could say it’s Modesty Blaise without the crazy outrageous fun elements.

As a spy movie or a spy spoof Blue Panther just doesn’t spark.

And then it just ends. Which I’m sure is very clever and avant-garde but I’m old-fashioned enough to enjoy movies with actual endings.

Of course Chabrol was not trying to make a spy movie, and he was not trying to make a spy spoof. He wasn’t interested in telling anything even resembling a coherent story. He was trying to deconstruct the genre and turn it inside out and make a movie about movies so if you’re looking for a spy movie you’ve picked the wrong movie.

Whether you enjoy this movie or not depends on whether you’re prepared to accept it for what it is. If so you’ll probably enjoy the game that Chabrol is playing, assuming that you like those sorts of cinematic games. Blue Panther is recommended if you’re a fan of this sort of thing. If such cinematic games are not your thing then you’ll be extremely bored.

Kino Lorber’s DVD provides a very nice transfer and there’s an audio commentary with Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson.

La Ronde (Circle of Love, 1964)

Roger Vadim’s La Ronde (AKA Circle of Love) was based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play Reigen, a play that provoked outraged reactions when it was published in early 20th century Germany. It was banned at one point. It was not performed until 1920 when it provoked further outrage. The play has been adapted to film several times, the best-known versions being Max Ophüls’ 1950 film and Vadim’s 1964 offering. The script for Vadim’s movie was written by Jean Anouilh.

Arthur Schnitzler also wrote the extremely interesting 1926 short novel Traumnovelle on which Stanley Kubrick’s final movie Eyes Wide Shut was based.

The structure of the play (and the movie) is a series of ten sexual encounters with each character figuring in two consecutive encounters with different people.

One of the things that really intrigues me is the extraordinary critical hostility to Roger Vadim. Critics who are prepared to gush over mediocre Hollywood directors seem to be enraged at the thought of a European director who failed to be serious-minded, pessimistic and obscure. Vadim’s output as a director was varied, interesting and always entertaining. Maybe he wasn’t overly deep, maybe he wasn’t an Ingmar Bergman, but he was inventive and fun. American critics might also be offended that Vadim treats sex lightheartedly.

Vadim assembled a fascinating cast that included Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean Sorel and Maurice Ronet but the big drawcard here is provided by three wonderful actresses - Catherine Spaak, Anna Karina and Jane Fonda. Fonda, who is fluent in the language, did not need to be dubbed for the original French version.

Vadim chose to set his movie in France in 1914, in the last days of La Belle Epoque. This gives it a slight melancholy tinge - this is a world about to be swept away by war.

The various sexual encounters cross class boundaries, and cross the boundaries between the respectable and the non-respectable.

There’s also adultery (which was probably what got the original play into so much hot water).

By 1964 these things were no longer so shocking, in Europe at least.

This is a chance to see Jane Fonda at her peak as an actress. She’s delightful as the adulteress wife Sophie. I like all the actresses in this movie. I’m a huge Catherine Spaak fan (if you haven’t seen her delightful 1968 movie The Libertine then do so immediately) and I loved her here. Anna Karina is charming and amusing. I like Marie Dubois a great deal as the likeable prostitute.

I mostly like the actors as well, especially Claude Giraud as the soldier Georges and the great Maurice Ronet as Sophie’s husband. And I’ve always rather liked Jean Sorel (who plays the cynical Count).

Mention should be made of Henri Decaë’s lush cinematography and Maurice Binder’s witty and playful opening titles. I also loved Jane Fonda’s outrageous bird hat.

Vadim appeared to have no great interest in politics and perhaps that’s one of the reasons critics don’t like this movie. The opportunity was there for some biting political satire (and there is some) but Vadim was not particularly interested. Personally I’m grateful to Vadim for keeping the politics to a minimum.

Even by 1964 standards this movie is rather tame. There’s a lot of sex going on but we don’t see it and there’s a bit of almost-nudity.

A lot of people seem to prefer the 1950 Max Ophüls version. I can’t comment directly on that because I haven’t yet seen the Ophüls film although I am intending to do so in the near future.

I’ve reviewed a number of Roger Vadim’s movies over the years. The Night Heaven Fell (1958) and Love on a Pillow (1962) are both quirky intriguing offbeat movies. Barbarella (1968) of course is simply wonderful and I even have a definite soft spot for his much-reviled Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).

The Kino DVD of La Ronde offers a very nice 16:9 enhanced transfer. The only extra of note is a brief interview with Vadim and Jane Fonda.

La Ronde is lighthearted and amusing. Recommended.

Ladies' Man (1962)

I’m a huge fan of the French Lemmy Caution movies of the 50s and early 60s. Ladies' Man (Lemmy pour les dames), directed as usual by Bernard Borderie and released in 1962, was the second last of the proper Lemmy Caution movies. Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville has its merits but I don’t count it as a real Lemmy Caution movie.

Ace FBI agent Lemmy Caution was created by English writer Peter Cheyney in the 1930s. Cheyney was immensely popular at one time, particularly in France.

The star of these movies was granite-faced gravel-voiced American actor Eddie Constantine who became a major pop culture icon in France as a result.

Ladies' Man opens with Lemmy enjoying vacation in France but wherever Lemmy goes trouble is sure to follow. At the moment it’s not trouble that is following him but a woman. In Lemmy’s world trouble and women tend to go together. The woman seems to wan to talk and then clams up.

Lemmy soon finds himself with a murder on his hands.

Lemmy has not one but three glamorous possibly dangerous dames to deal with. Three female friends. The curious thing is that at one time there were five of them but two met with unfortunate accidents. This interests Lemmy. He has a suspicious mind.

When somebody tries to gun him down from a speedboat Lemmy becomes even more interested.

Lemmy has plenty of suspects but the big problem is figuring out a possible motive. And the motive in this case is more complicated than it seems.

The plot is serviceable enough. Lemmy is pretty sure that one of the three women is either a murderess or an accomplice to murder and both Lemmy and the audience are kept guessing as to her identity (and there’s always the slight possibility all three women are innocent).

Eddie Constantine is terrific as usual. He had exactly the right devil-may-care attitude and he had charisma to burn. And a certain rough charm.

It’s certainly a bonus having the lovely Françoise Brion as one of the three ladies. Brion’s most memorable performance was in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s strange perplexing and fascinating L’immortelle (1963). The other cast members are perfectly adequate, with Paul Mercey as the long-suffering rather cynical Inspector Boumègue and Robert Berri as Lemmy’s good-natured but not overly smart wartime buddy Dombie being quite good and adding some comic relief. Thankfully the comic relief is kept to a minimum - it’s not needed since Lemmy Caution provides more than enough amusemnt with his hardboiled one-liners.

Finding the Lemmy Caution movies in decent English-friendly versions has always been quite a challenge and without the grey market they would have been impossible to see. It would be really nice if somebody were to release a boxed set of restored versions of these films but sadly there’s still no sign of that happening.

Ladies' Man is part crime thriller and part eurospy movie. It’s a typical entry in the series. In other words it’s an immense amount of fun and highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed a couple of other Lemmy Caution movies - the excellent Poison Ivy (1953) and Women Are Like That (1960).