L'enquête de l'inspecteur Morgan

I didn't think about Laura so much as I watched this but rather the Profumo-Christine Keeler affair that so fascinated English society in the early sixties. Losey did a fairly entertaining film around a manipulating society woman and a hapless young artist. The performances by Micheline Presle and Stanley Baker are expert; only Hardy Kruger disappoints with some unfortunate mugging. It's a shame they couldn't have had Horst Bucholz for that part. The sets were done by the splendid Edward Carrick, son of Gordon Craig. The décor of the dead woman's flat arouses the scorn of proletarian Baker, it's so exotic and you really feel you're in Losey territory.

An excellent Stanley Baker in full Welsh-accented flow as the idiosyncratic DI David Evan Morgan unravelling the murder of a French woman at her oddly gaudy London flat. Baker keeps an unconventionally close rein on Hardy Kruger, who maintains his innocence whilst withholding enough information to keep the inspector interested in his relationship with the dead woman. Being found at the murder scene doesn't help the young Dutchman's situation. Some flashbacks give us the background to the tensions between the struggling artist and his muse. Downing a considerable quantity of milk (peptic ulcers were the cause of the commonest surgical operation in the late 1950s - fewer cigarillos would help Stanley) Morgan has to juggle his quest for the truth with the usual insistence from above that a top level government minister is not to be embarrassed by the outcome.

Joseph Losey was the USA's loss and the UK's gain. He was a great director because he took chances on subject matter, and he made excellent films as well as disappointing ones. All original director's do, and ' Blind Date ' is in my opinion one of his best. Hardy Kruger playing a young Dutch artist ( brilliant acting ) meets up with a very beautiful Micheline Presle, and a murder opens the film and Kruger arrives at the right place at the wrong time. The place is ( probably ) set in Chelsea, London and I have a hunch Losey liked Chelsea as he set the famous film of his ' The Servant ' there. Cat and mouse games happen in that film, and they happen too in ' Blind Date. ' Kruger is suspected of murder and Stanley Baker plays an over aggressive policeman and a lot of the film is a game of entrapment and a rapid confession. Between these scenes we go back in time to the murder victim, played by Presle at her very best, and without explicit sex the film exudes eroticism. A lot of the visuals that Losey seemed to like a lot; mirrors, cluttered interiors etc are all there, and made as it was in 1959 it equalled any film made by Louis Malle or Claude Chabrol in France. But Losey was his own man, and as well as leaving the USA he brought over with him shades of nightmares that are there in ' M ' and in ' The Big Night. ' I give no spoilers about the end only that the last words said by Presle ( and in passion ) will resonate in my mind for a long time. This is no minor work of Losey and it should be rated far higher than it is. I dare to use that overused word masterpiece again, and it is my personal favourite of his films as it shows just how close love is to dislike, indifference and betrayal. Watch it on the UK's Talking Pictures, or on YouTube or be generous and buy it. If you own it I bet you will want to see it much more than once to catch the fine dialogue, superb acting and a London that was once achingly beautiful.

I wouldn't say this is a film to stimulate the senses, not one packed with energy, but it's success lies very much in its subtlety, delivery and superb performances.

It's a wonderfully stylish film, it looks so good, from the very bright start to the rather downbeat conclusion. The story is fed out very slowly, with the story unravelling teasingly slowly. As a mystery it works well, what seems so obvious initially isn't quite the case, so much more is happening, with a twist waiting.

Great performances, Hardy Kruger was fantastic in the lead role. Very much a battle of the classes, with a hugely socialist element on show, but it fits in well.

Very enjoyable, slick movie. 8/10

I saw this film almost sixty years ago when I was a nineteen year old "usherette" in a first run movie house in Sacramento, CA. Yes we did wear satin bell-bottoms, and carry a flashlight.

I have never seen this film since seeing it several times many years ago. It was the relationship between the older woman, and the younger man, that made me fall in love with Hardy Kruger and the film. This story line was both new and daring for the time. London was still in recovery from World War II, and it was not the city that most film viewers know now. I don't remember a story of class, I only remember a great hot love story.