The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun

The film could be described as 40% Alfred Hitchcock and 60% Raymond Chandler. It initially starts out as a very glossy chick-flick with our heroine Danielle Lang (Samantha Eggar) working as a PA in a chic Paris advertising agency for her dashing boss Oliver Reed. The Christian Dior dresses perfectly capture the glamour of very late 1960s Paris. I would have been happy enough with just that, but it gets darker and better as the movie progresses. Although Mademoiselle Lang plays the confused and helpless heroine for most (but not all) of the film, it does pass the Bechdel test. Samantha Eggars performance is first rate, but I have to say I think Stéphane Audran steals the show as Samantha Eggars former flatmate. However, as a long time Stéphane Audran fan I may be biased, and in fact that was the main reason I watched the film in the first place. Most of the supporting cast is very good also.

Where the film goes wrong is that it spends far too long on the 'mystery' aspect of the plot and when the 'reveal' happens it is too rushed. I think this may simply be bad editing since there are many many scenes in the 'reveal' sequence which are cut together in the space of a few minutes. Maybe if they'd been stretched out over 30 minutes it would have made everything feel more balanced. Particularly as the 'mystery' segment starts to drag toward the end.

It didn't help that I saw a really poor print of this. I would love to see the original, I'll bet the colours look sumptuous.

Petula Clark's song fits like a nut in the wall, but what's more, the movie is missed from head to tail. I had great expectations from Samantha Eggar and Oliver Reed, two actors which I love very much. Both they try their best but the result is bad. Stéphane Audran is OK, as usual, in the role of wicked woman. I also had great expectations from Anatole Litvak, who made some very good movies like "The Night of the Generals" and "Goodbye Again". But this screening after Sébastien Japrisot it's a great disappointment. 3 stars, one for Eggar, one for Reed and one for Audran.

Samantha Eggar goes to employer Oliver Reed's home to do some work before he flies off with his wife, Stephane Audran, for a vacation. She drops the couple off at the airport, with instructions to drive the big Mercury convertible back to the office. But she has never handled a car like this, and takes a wrong turn. She finds herself traveling south, and decides to travel down to the Cote D'Azur. But odd things keep happening, like John McEnery, who plops himself into her car and charms her into sleeping with her, all the people who insist that she's been been there the day before, traveling to Paris. When a corpse turns up suddenly in the trunk with a rifle, things shift from bizarre to deadly.

Anatole Litvak's last movie is a stylish thriller, well served by the cast and with lots of shots to show off the scenery thanks to DP Claude Renoir. The long monologue that explains what was going on is, I suppose, a necessity, if a trifle long-winded. It's a good ending to a long career for Litvak, who studied theater in his native Ukraine ad Russia, made films in Germany, France, and America, and died in 1974 at the age of 72.

This movie had high pretensions.Sebastien Japrisot is a poor man's Boileau Narcejac whose scripts are far-fetched and fall apart at every twist.Stephane Audran's presence could give a Claude Chabrol feel.And the heroine was Samantha Eggar, of "the collector" fame (1965).Add Oliver Reed and a director,Anatole Litvak, who succeeded brilliantly in suspense in former days (sorry wrong number,1948)

Eggar has been framed and she tries to understand as the plot thickens.Would her boss (Reed) do very bad things behind her back?Don't expect "les diaboliques".The ending is trite and disappointing.

Anatole Litvak called it a day after this thriller.The sixties had been pretty disastrous for him,encompassing Françoise Sagan (Aimez-vous Brahms?/Goodbye again) and absurd "historical" thriller(the night of the generals)

Some films ended up on my "must-see" list simply because they have exhilarating titles! I mean, who wouldn't want to see a movie named "Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun"? The fact it stars Oliver Reed (one of my favorite actors of all times), takes place in beautiful Southern France, and got released during the peak era of paranoid/giallo thriller gems are fantastic bonuses! I only have one slight regret, namely that I watched the film on a French television channel where it was shown in its original version, without subtitles. My French is pretty good, but the convoluted plot requires a lot of concentration and I may have missed one or two details during the fascinating climax sequence; - during the mandatory summary/explanation speech in which all the pieces of the puzzle are neatly put together.

Reed stars as a wealthy American businessman in Paris, who requests his secretary Danielle (Danni for her friends) to drive his fancy US-car back to his home after dropping him and his family off at the airport. Instead of doing this, Danni spontaneously decides to drive further South, to the Riviera, for the weekend. It doesn't turn into the careless trip she hoped for, though, as she gets attacked in a gas station, and people all along the route recognize her from recent previous encounters even though she never was there before. Or was she?

"Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun" is a compelling, albeit occasionally slow-paced, mystery with a good atmosphere, stellar performances, and a surefooted direction. My main complaint would be that the plot never reveals any clues or hints to invite the viewer to guess along about what could be the big surprise twist. I also haven't read the novel on which the film is based, so can't say if this differs in the screenplay. For fans of 70s Euro-cult, like myself, the film has a dream-cast, including the aforementioned Oliver Reed, but also Samantha Eggar ("The Brood", "Curtains") and Stéphane Audran ("Without Apparent Motive", "Spider's Labyrinth"). There's also a small role for Marcel Bozzuffi as the gas-station attendant. One year later, he would star in "The French Connection", and then continue to become a regular in Italian poliziotesschi-classics (like "Colt .38 Special Squad" and "Rome: the other Side of Violence").