La seconde vérité

Christian-Jaque has made some excellent films. This is not one of them. Although, Robert Hossein struggled. Not exactly Michele Mercier. Seeing this film on January 9, 2021, I found out that Hossein left us, at the age of 93, on the last day of the terrible year 2020. In the role of the commissioner, a very good French actor, Jean-Pierre Darras.

I am sure another director would have given us something far better, for instance André Cayatte or Claude Autant Lara. I don't know the Christian Jacques' career very well, but he is not very "comfortable" here, that's the least we can say. The directing is flat, bland, and the story totally uninteresting. I guess the producers bet on the duo Robert Hossein-Michèle Mercier - ANGELIQUE film series - to make a gross with this one. All long the viewing, I felt something very strange, I did not care at all about what would happen in the next sequence. I felt bore. I think Christian Jacques did not "follow" the sixties cinema, because he was still a forties and fifties movie maker. The car crashed by the train scene is awesome, the best part of this film.

Christian -Jacques,like so many directors of the forties/Fifties collapsed in the sixties.And I do not put the blame on the new wave for once.He cast the legendary couple of the Angelique movies (Robert Hossein and Michèle Mercier) in a whodunit so predictable you will have guessed the truth (or to be precise "the second truth",which is the title of the movie)long before the end.This kind of cinema was completely out of time in 1966.

Word to the wise:do take Christian -Jacques's "les disparus de Saint Agil instead!