fflambeau Reviews

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

One of the Greatest Film Noir and Heist Movies of all time

[10/10 · 17 February 2013]

This is a fantastic crime movie and the audience, through brilliant directing by none other than John Huston, is pretty much led into backing the criminals. The cast is superb: Sterling Hayden was never better. He was a decorated war hero, and at 6' 6" could be menacing (in real life, he served as a decorated commando in Greece and Yugoslavia and really did kill people with his bare hands). Sam Jaffe won awards for his portrayal of the master criminal/planner and he is certainly good but I think Hayden has a dimension to his character that is beyond Jaffe's. Louis Calhern, usually MGM's Mr. Debonair, is also splendid as an oily and odious, double-dealing lawyer, who finances the heist. His performance here indicates that he could have provided MGM with much more, had it ever asked for more than the suave and sophisticated, debonair man he usually played. Huston does a superb job in directing him out of his usual role. Also terrific are Jean Hagen, Hayden's love interest (and it is a compelling one); Marilyn Monroe, who shows she really can act; and James Whitmore.

In a sense, these "bad guys" are just caught up in the problems of the city and American civilization in the 50's ("The Asphalt Jungle"), trying to make a go of the bad cards they have been dealt and there is little difference between the "good guys" and the bad guys, especially with one cop being a rogue. Terrific, no nonsense script. This film won many major awards but Hayden never got the recognition for his performance that he deserved. He, not Jaffe, in my opinion, held the movie together, just as he physically in the movie, held Jaffe and moved the "little man" around.

A great film noire; full of "dark scenes", duplicity, corruption, and wasted and unfilled dreams. Perhaps John Huston's greatest movie and that's saying a lot!

San Francisco (1936)

Dated, Too Religious in Theme but Great Earthquake Scenes

[5/10 · 2 February 2013]

What to make of this movie? It has 3 terrific stars in Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, and the female interest and singer, Jeannette McDonald. I cannot say that McDonald's singing thrills me because she has a dated style and warbles but Tracy and Gable deliver. Especially Gable who is at his macho best.

What undercuts this story is the religious message which is about the strongest outside of any movie outside of the "10 Commandments" where it is more understandable. The plot is written so you have good vs. bad, white vs. black, Tracy vs. Gable. Of course, the earthquake not only shakes the city, it shakes Gable's entire outlook and he gets on his knees and thanks God that his love, McDonald, survived. This is all a bit soppy in the 21st century. And Tracy, although a very good actor, almost is given a halo in this movie.

Perhaps the star of the movie is the earthquake itself; considering this movie was made in 1936, the special effects were fantastic, even good by today's standard. Superb directing of the earthquake scene, Wikipedia says by D.W. Griffith in addition to the credited director Woody Van Dyke.

Also notable are black performers, first in a contest scene (won of course by J. McDonald) and then some children as dancers in the earthquake scene. This was in 1936 so quite unusual.

It is notable in a 3rd way: it is one of the movies credited with launching Spencer Tracy as a mega star. A good performance, but definitely not his best. Gable's performance here is far more powerful.

So, like its theme of good and bad, this movie is a mix. It did not do well in the academy award hunt although nominated frequently (only 1 win) and I can see why: too much religion.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Terrific Movie about Intolerance and Hatred

[10/10 · 1 February 2013]

This is a superb movie that deals with the questions of justice, what makes a community, intolerance, and hatred. Big topics in other words and there is a big cast that delivers here. Spency Tracy is terrific as the outsider, the force from the civilized world (the director set this up beautifully with the opening scene of Tracy dressed in a suit getting off a gleaming train in the middle of the desert; it is the first time in 4 years the train stopped at this little pothole of a town).

The director, with a beautiful script and top acting, builds excitement: who is this mysterious man, played by Spencer Tracy and what is he up to? At first, it appears he is some kind of a wimp, a big city guy in over his head and Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin are real thugs and frightening. So too is Robert Ryan, not usually one of my favorite actors, but the director, John Sturges gets a great performance out of him. Walter Brennan is also terrific as a kind of washed up, small town hick doctor. He's the only one in town who has any iota of decency left in him. Gradually, behind Tracy, the town gathers enough strength to face down the bad guys. It's a typical story from westerns, or from WWII movies as well.

Tracy is brilliant here and clearly outshines an all star cast. Ernest Borgnine is the epitome of evil and hatred here (in real life he was a great guy).

This film has it all: tight script with some great lines, great acting, great directing, and a climactic ending.

Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962)

Durante & Day are Show Stoppers

[9/10 · 30 January 2013]

The story isn't much here: boy meets girl, they fall in love etc. BUT what is terrific are the performances, singing, and acting by all of the main actors. Especially good is Jimmy Durante: he has some really funny lines (like, "Elephant? What elephant?") and more and he and Martha Raye are a great comic team. He also shows he can dance and sing (kind of, once you get used to the snozola's voice).

Doris Day is Doris Day; she's lovely here. Some people on these reviews think she was too old. Actually, she looks about right for S. Boyd, the heartthrob of the movie. She's divine in that pink outfit she wears when he sings, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." He by the way is very virile and sings fairly well (it does sound like HIS voice and not dubbing). Day was the biggest star of her time and she delivers in this movie. Especially touching is her rendition of "Little Girl Blue".

I've seen this movie at least 3 times on Turner Classic Movies and the color and sound are spectacular. I also think the story moves along fairly briskly and the music is well integrated into the action. What is remarkable about this movie is that it doesn't seem dated, or have lost its charm (in contrast, for instance, to many musicals like "Meet me in St. Louis). Because of the elemental themes involved: love/hate; struggles between father and son; struggles for a circus to make it economically etc. it's message is timeless. The ending, about a 7 minute collage of music, is also fantastic and centers around the song, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." I think this movie never made it, oddly enough because of its cumbersome name. "Billie Rose's Jumbo"? Billie Rose was involved in the play and stipulated that if this was ever made into a musical, his name had to appear in the titles. I think this hurt the movie. It's well worth watching and if you see it, you'll want to see it again and again.

Second Chorus (1940)

Worth it For Artie Shaw & Fred Astaire Dancing Numbers

[5/10 · 1 December 2012]

Why spend any time describing this dull plot or the mediocre acting? You should watch this only to see Fred Astaire do a couple of great numbers, one as a Russian, another while he "conducts" the Artie Shaw band (yes, he's in a tux for that one).

What's fascinating for modern audiences is to see Artie Shaw, not so much for his acting either, but because he plays a couple of great numbers here and he was terrific on the licorice stick. He's young here too (30 years old). One number he was famous for (not here though) is "Stardust" and it featured a trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield). Butterfield actually plays for Burgess Meredith here (who like Astaire fakes poorly on the horn). We also see Buddy Rich in the orchestra playing drums next to Artie Shaw. What a combo! Shaw was a huge sensation in the 30's and 40's; an equal to the more famous now Benny Goodman. He sold more than a hundred million records. He brought along talent like Billie Holiday, Mel Torme, Buddy Rich, and Ray Conniff. He also played classical music with Leonard Bernstein. In this movie, he plays "Concerto for Clarinet". This film also brought him 2 Oscar nominations, one for Best Score and one for Best Song ("Love of my Life").

Astaire once called this the "worst movie I ever made" and for him, that's true. But it's great to see Shaw play, and how he could play! Shaw admired Astaire but said he was a tireless worker, the opposite of the kind of debonair image he presented in top hat and tails.

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Good Movie that Needed a Better Director/Editor

[7/10 · 27 November 2012]

This is a good movie that could have been great had it been done by a better director and editor; it is too long at 3 hours and drags in parts (especially the numerous, syrupy little girl/children scenes). Unfortunately too, the ending is sappy.

Having said that, William Powell is outstanding. He's displays the same playful cheerfulness that he exudes in the "Thin Man" series and the writers have given him some great lines. At one point, Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz no less) berates him for stealing his valet. Powell responds: "Gentlemen don't argue over gentlemen's gentlemen!" At another point, in England, Powell gives a doorman a 5 pound tip. The doorman says, "I say, do you realize you gave me a 5 pound note?" Powell replies, "I'm trying to lose weight." Powell could deliver these amusing lines but could also act seriously, as this movie shows. Too bad the ending is so stilted and romanticized.

Luise Rainer is outstanding in her performance as Flo's girlfriend and then wife (Anna Held) and completely outshines Myrna Loy in this movie. No wonder she won her second Oscar as Best Actress for this riveting performance. She captures innocence and love and its loss here. Note too that she was born in Germany and yet plays the role of French lady perfectly down to the correct accent. A bravura performance well worthy of the Oscar she won.

Frank Morgan also delivers as Zigfield's friend/rival: he has a wonderful stage presence and facial features with that fine and distinctive voice.

Cut this movie down by about 20-30 minutes (and rewrite the ending) and this could have been a great movie. There are some outstanding production numbers but the "Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" goes on and on and on and on. The director doesn't seem to understand the concept of overkill. And why not let Dennis Morgan, who had a fine voice, sing? Ray Bolger briefly steals the show with his dance number (I mean, how can anyone be so limber to do 3 splits in succession and then "recover" from them effortlessly? He was better than Astaire in my opinion. Many people here have complimented Fanny Brice, who plays herself, but I thought that her acting was overkill too especially with the repeated eye movements. Maybe that kind of shlock is popular on the stage, but repeated several times on the screen it was a killer. Again, the director (Robert Leonard) should have directed with a firmer hand.

Yes to Powell, Louise Rainer, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger and Dennis Morgan, a big NO tothe Director, Fanny Brice, the children scenes and the ending. Odd that Myrna Loy, who of course later teamed up so effectively with Powell, is completely outperformed here by Louise Rainer.

The Unholy Wife (1957)

Dull, Poorly Directed and Perpetrates stereotypes. Miss this lemon!

[1/10 · 25 November 2012]

This is truly a pathetic movie--I watched it only because it has Rod Steiger in it and a lady whom I did not know and mistook for Marilyn Monroe. It turns out she was Diana Dors, a Brit who seems to be cast as the typical dumb but beautiful blonde. The director is hapless and does not know how to create tension. Steiger is awful and mumbles and stumbles through his performance (and he looks super fat here). The ending, showing grape fields and Steiger hoisting his young son while showing him how to eat a grape is saccharine in the extreme. The plot makes no sense: who would believe that the blonde would murder the mother in law, when it was equally as possible for her to have committed suicide (which she actually did)? Dors seems to have some acting talent but the studio and director seemed to have only one thing on their mind: her curves. She is simply not evil enough for the part nor does the script give her any good lines. The church is injected as some kind of holier than thou medium of truth through the priest: it all just stinks. Spend your time doing something else and give this lemon a miss.

Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946)

Both actors really were from Wisconsin

[7/10 · 25 November 2012]

Perhaps unknown to most of the posters here, both stars of this movie, Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan, were born in Wisconsin of which Milwaukee is the biggest city so there is something of an inside joke here! Dennis Morgan was born in tiny Prentice, Wisconsin, and went to college at Carroll College in Milwauke as did Jack Carson. Carson was born in Canada but his family moved to Milwaukee soon after and he always regarded that as his home town. So this is kind of an inside joke in a script full of inside jokes. Carson and Morgan were great friends. Carson died the same day Dick Powell did.

This is not a great movie but it is an entertaining one and with the startling cameo from....at the end, what could be better?

Dark Passage (1947)

Terrific Film Noir with Bogie and Bacall

[10/10 · 24 November 2012]

This is a terrific film noir film made just after the end of WWII and starring Hollywood's biggest star, Humphrey Bogart, and the dazzling L. Bacall. This movie has all the elements of film noir. 1) a wrongly accused man (Bogart) who needs to change his identity through plastic surgery to prove his innocence. Fate seems to have dealt him a bad hand and to determine his outcome as it does in all noir movies. 2) much of the movie is set at night in the big city (San Francisco) with an especially good and tense scene set at a greasy spoon on Fillmore St. Douglas Kennedy is especially good as the threatening dick in the diner who quickly spots Bogart as out of sync (he asks for the results at Bay Meadows when that horse racing track has already been closed for a month). The uncredited Tom Fadden also superbly plays the counter clerk at the diner and his lament, "I should have kept my mouth shut" underscores the sense of doom and fate in which Bogart seems to be trapped. Fadden is the kind of character actor you can spot but never know his name. 3) maybe the most riveting performance in the entire movie comes from the terrific Agnes Moorehead who plays the femme fatale (Bogart's wife who set him up for a murder rap). She's sharp, nasty and comes to her own doom by falling out of a window in a terrific scene with Bogart. 4) Another great performance is turned in by another character actor, Clifton Young as Baker, the small time hood trying to make it into the big times. His lament, "I sure learned a lot at San Quenton; they got some real smart guys there!" even earns a smile from Bogart. Of course, he utters that line shortly before being pushed off a cliff and dying at Bogart's hands. 5) Yet another terrific performance comes from Houseley Stevenson as the sinister and near criminal plastic surgeon. He teams up with the cabbie (Tom D'Andrea) in one of the better Mutt and Jeff teams of the underworld and it is to them that Bogart has to turn for help. 6) Let's not forget Bacall. Who can? She sizzles throughout the movie and especially is hot on the telephone call near the end of the movie to Bogart. He calls from a bus depot in San Francisco while their favorite song, "Too Marvelous for Words" (lyrics by the unforgettable Johnny Mercer) can be heard in the background from the jukebox that Bogart drops some small change into.

Maybe because Bogart is involved (note that in all the cases of death that he is involved with, he plays an innocent role) and Bacall, this noir has a happy ending. Again with "Too Marvelous for Words" announcing Bacall's meeting with Bogart at a small bistro on the sea in Peru.

Presiding over this wonderful movie is the little known and under appreciated director and writer, Delmer Daves. He gets terrific performances from his entire cast and the movie moves along briskly and with tension (notice all the policemen lurking in the backgrounds of so many scenes and how the police are not seen as saviors but as repressive troublemakers). Daves was a native of San Francisco so it is understandable that he turned that city's beauty into one of the stars of the pic: you see Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, cable cars turning at the foot of Powell Street and a great scene where Boggie escapes from a possible murder scene by grabbing on to a cable car plus one scene is shot at an all night diner on Fillmore and Post. Bogart too made some of his most memorable pics in San Francisco (Sam Spade). Note that as with the "appearance can be deceiving" theme with Bogart's surgery, San Francisco, the director suggests, is more than its glitter. It, and American society, has a deep undercurrent that this movie and other noirs explores.

Director Daves has a string of terrific movies aside from Dark Passage and they include: The Petrified Forrest (also with Bogart; Daves was the script writer); Destination Tokyo; Broken Arrow; 3:10 to Yuma; A Summer Place; and Spencer's Mountain in a career spanning more than 4 decades in Hollywood. Daves also had a law degree from Stanford so it is interesting to see him show the legal world, including the police, as far from a benign institution. Daves also uses the "subjective technique" extremely well: we see the movie through Bogart's eyes (and his wraps from the plastic surgery) for the first hour of the movie or so. This cements the audiences sympathy with Bogart of course.

All in all, this is a great movie that can be watched again and again.

Song of the Thin Man (1947)

Excellent Mystery & Great Jazz Background

[9/10 · 27 October 2012]

I completely disagree with some prior posters who thought this the worst in the series. First of all, it's one of the best mysteries with any number of possible candidates. Secondly, it has a really strong supporting cast led by K. Wynn who is terrific in the role of jazz inside man. Jayne Meadows and Ralph Morgan are also strong supporting actors. Third, it really showcases jazz, perhaps inadvertently and in a negative way however (as out of touch, out of the mainstream with a different language etc.), and has some great numbers (including the theme song, "You're Not so Easy to Forget" which I think the director was using as a nod to this being the last in the series of Thin Man movies and to William Powell. The director obviously makes his disapproving commentary on jazz in a subtle way: by focusing the camera on the bust of Beethoven just after a jazz scene! But he does integrate the music well into the plot since much of the plot takes place on a gambling boat.

The denouement of the mystery is also probably influential on other mystery/criminal series to follow (like Perry Mason) in that the entire cast of suspects is collected together, as in an Agatha Christie or a Rex Stout story. Fourth, the script is very, very witty and you have to pay close attention to the words (like the reference to Somerset Maugham with the "it couldn't be his razor", a reference to Maugham's, The Razor's Edge. Or how about the time William Powell is "eying" a ladies earrings but his sight is a bit focused elsewhere and Nora reminds him something like, "earrings are higher than that"! But I did think we saw too much of Dean Stockwell and the film would have better off with him in a reduced role (sorry to his fan club, but I'm no fan). I thought I saw the Wizard of Oz in this movie and it turns out that it is his (almost lookalike) brother! Lastly, Asta has a big and important role in this movie, fittingly so, since it is the last in the series. In short, great acting, great script, and great harmony between Powell (who really could act, especially in comedy) and M. Loy. Superb.

Just the Three of Us (2010)

Charming If Flawed Movie Told from Child's Viewpoint

[7/10 · 24 February 2012]

This is a creative, offbeat but ultimately flawed movie told from the point of view of a young French boy. The film is set in 1972 and revolves around the life of a six year old boy, Sebastian (played convincingly by Nathan Georgelin). He's in elementary school and his mother, Marie (Emannuelle Beart) is a teacher at the same school.

The boy fantasizes that she is the Queen of England and there are lovely dream-like sequences of her "performing" as the Queen, "waving" to her subjects, for instance. Such scenes capture the simplicity and innocence of childhood. Perhaps Sebastian has these dreams because he can sense that all is not well with his father who is in a separate world of his own. He's an engineer who has quit his job and taken up inventing but his would-be inventions (like a "4th piano" pedal to turn the pages for piano players) never seem to work. It's clear that his own family sees him as a failure, someone who cannot fit into everyday life. Indeed, there is one gripping scene in which Sebastian's brother rips into his own father for his failures. All is not well in bed between father (beautifully played by Jacques Gamblin) and mother too and to add to this dysfunctional family, grandpa, who lives with them, still believes World War II is going on.

Sebastian's world changes when new neighbors move in next door. The new lady neighbor is a colorful dingbat, another escapist who wants to create an Andalusian theme for her house and life. She doesn't seem to realize that her boyfriend--they marry later--has fallen in love with Sebastian's mother. The love triangle is completed with this man, a handsome railway worker called Philippe (well acted by Stefano Accorsi). So in this dreamlike world, his mother is not only a Queen in his escapist fantasies, she is in reality in love with another woman's husband and ultimately she acts as a destroyer. The film becomes darker when the abandoned girlfriend/wife becomes pregnant. She finally realizes her boyfriend/husband has been unfaithful and decides to move away to solve the problem. Marie pursues the railway worker but he abandons her completely, throwing her away in a gutter. Again, why and how he manages to change his rakish ways overnight is not made clear. This is just one of the unbelievable aspects of the plot. Likewise, it seems absurd that anyone in modern day France would be oblivious of the hot love affair between Philippe and Marie, as the railway worker's wife is for so long. A third problem is that the spurned Marie now essentially goes crazy and dies. Her transformation from dutiful teacher/wife to a wanton woman is never explained. All of this seems a bit far fetched upon reflection and after the movie is over but while it is running, the story is so well acted and moves in such a brisk pace that it holds the viewer's interest. At the same time, the numerous plot and directing problems cannot be ignored by the viewer, and he/she ultimately has the feeling of "this doesn't seem right". Reflecting on the movie, I feel that the director/writer (one and the same person) had an excellent idea dealing essentially with escape from painful situations. The boy escapes from his problems by dreaming; the grandpa escapes by returning to his glory years of WWII; the railway worker's girlfriend/wife escapes in her Andalusian fantasies. The only people who do not escape, like Marie the faithless teacher/wife, are ultimately hurt. The railway worker also doesn't escape and has to live with the woman he doesn't particularly love. While the escapist/dreaming theme is an acceptable and interesting one, it is never really developed by the writer/director in a proper way. In fact, this movie scores a number of "near hits" but always seems to fall short of what it could have been in better hands.

This is further shown at the end of the story when the plot takes another absurd twist when Sebastian's failed inventor father finally comes up with a mysterious invention (never explained but dealing with tea pots of all things!) that enriches him and the family, and of course, leads to an interview with the real Queen of England! This rather silly ending is so weak that it can only be explained by the fact that the director wanted a happy ending. With this preposterous ending, Philippe acts out of character with what we have seen with them on the screen. Moreover, the writer/director seems to ignore the likely impact of such a story on the formative mind of a young boy, other than to make the somewhat obvious point that such a boy might be driven to fantasy/dreaming. I think he missed a major opportunity to address that question. The director, it seems, was unable to decide whether his story is a comedy/farce or a tragedy and ultimately ends with the lighter touch but one that is simply pedestrian: the weak husband triumphant.

So all in all, an absorbing, entertaining movie held together by some very strong acting performances. Unfortunately, they are undermined by an essentially weak and unbelievable plot that fails to address the central question of what all of these human foibles would have done to a young boy's developing personality. In fact, the boy at the end of the movie is pretty much as he is at the start,which would be extremely doubtful given all that happened to him and those around him.

The Soft Skin (1964)

Superb and suspenseful movie

[10/10 · 30 January 2012]

Too bad this superb and suspenseful movie has such an inaccurate synopsis written for it. The wife is not "unbalanced" in the picture; she is driven to madness by a series of seemingly random events, just as her husband's life unravels for the same reasons. This movie has a strong noir element to it with the femme fatal being the seductive air line hostess who attracts the attention of a successful writer/artist by the name of Pierre Lachenay, brilliantly acted by Jean Desailly. Fate is important in the outcome as it is in all noirs. The beautiful music has a driving, fatalistic theme to it that is repeated from beginning to end. Moreover, a series of random events, especially concerning near misses and misses in time, dictates the outcome. Lachenay almost misses his plane to Lisbon, he almost misses the air hostess in her hotel (at first she spurns him), he almost misses her again when they are back in Paris, he goes to the airport again and seemingly misses her only to meet her because her own plans have changed. Tellingly, he later misses calling his wife by seconds because another woman (how revealing is that?) occupies the sole phone booth at the restaurant he's at. He cannot reach her and misses by a few seconds; note the time the director uses on this scene where the wife's maid is called to the phone, asked to check the stairway to see if the wife is still about, and asked to see if the maid can catch her in the car lot. Again fate, destiny. He misses his wife just as she has left on her fatal journey that results in his end too. So too, it is by chance that his wife finds the receipt for some developed film that she then picks up and when she sees the pictures of her husband with the air line stewardess, she goes mad so once again a seemingly random event (the finding of the film) directly results in the husband's death. I concur with other people here who have commented on the director's focus on mechanical items. I think the director focuses on them (the air line cockpit and the gas station dispenser, for instance) as a way of showing the nature of the unfolding of fate: things work a certain way and will determine a certain outcome. Press a button and there is a certain outcome; one that after something is done is not "chosen." Fate or destiny or whatever it might be called, in this movie is very strong, and the driving force here, even stronger than romantic attachments which seem fleeting and ephemeral and even stronger than family attachments, between husband and wife and parents and child. This, I believe, is the central theme of this superb movie, well acted and directed. Some professional film critics wrongly have made comparisons to Hitchcock but I do not see them. For this movie is far more introspective, far more psychological much bleaker than most Hitchcocks where, for instance, a deranged lunatic kills madly (in "Psycho") or again in "Rope" or the even weaker, "Frenzy". So too, there is no focus on discovering or catching the murderer, almost always key in Hitchcock. No, the emphasis in this movie is on why something happens, why a life changes in a major way caused by seemingly small, inevitable changes. Here, unlike in "Psycho" no one is deranged until fate dissolves relationships. The director of this movie, Truffaut, was a big fan of Orson Welles and I believe that Welles--NOT Hitchcock--was a prime source of inspiration to him. For instance, the fate theme is very strong in Welles superb "Lady from Shanghai" where the Welles character, seemingly randomly meets the femme fatale, ends up working for her and her husband, falls in love with her, and finally goes on trial for murder. Another Welles film noir, the even better "Touch of Evil" also goes into similar themes studying the utter disintegration of the corrupt law official, Hank Quinlan, brilliantly played by Welles. To understand "The Soft Skin", I believe, one must understand classic film noir and Welles. Both movies by Welles were made just a few years before this one. Contrast Truffaut's approach here (black and white film; lots of shadows; femme fatale; bleak outcome with death to the lead character) with a contemporary Hitchcock like "North by Northwest" which is playful not bleak, romantic (boy gets girl story) and optimistic throughout and especially in the ending, and is filmed in color. This movie, by contrast, has many of the elements of film noir even though it is made much later than most such films: it is shot in black and white, often with shadows and with night scenes (especially the eerie scenes in Rheims which are pivotal to the story), with a deadly (and eventually, uncaring) femme fatale, with fate decreeing the outcome of husband, wife and family. The male lead, a seemingly powerful force at the opening of the movie, has no real control over his final destiny. Another strong influence appears to be the writing of the brilliant Belgian/French author, Georges Simenon. In his books (not so much the Maigret ones but the far better stand alone novels), Simenon often looks at a turning point in people's lives and how something dissolves relationships which is exactly what happens here. Simenon and Welles, not Hitchcock, are the spring sources of Francois Truffaut's inspiration in this movie. Great acting, great directing, great music, great movie! This movie is a little appreciated gem especially by the professional critics who dwelt on the adultery aspects of the movie to the exclusion of all else.