L'inchiesta dell'ispettore Morgan

At first sight ,"Blind date" recalls some Agatha Christie play.Only three characters are really important and they all have. a different nationality:Baker is English,Krüger is German (Dutch in the movie!) and Micheline Presles is French.People who know Preminger's "Laura" cannot help but be struck by the way Presles's character is used.

But the essentials are somewhere else.Losey had always been fascinated by the social status,particularly the upper classes' decay:to name but three ,"the servant" ,"the gypsy and the gentleman" and "the go-between" were blatant examples.Here prole Kruger would be an ideal culprit,he who only owns one suit,thus a good way of avoiding scandal.Presles and her husband are the posh people at the top,but they are about to fall in their mire.

That said,Losey's directing is a bit static,and looks like some filmed stage production.The jaunty first and last pictures seem irrelevant.

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.

Blind Date (AKA: Chance Meeting) is directed by Joseph Losey and adapted to screenplay by Ben Barzman and Millard Lampell from the Leigh Howard novel. It stars Hardy Krüger, Stanley Baker, Micheline Presle, John Van Eyssen, Gordon Jackson and Robert Flemyng. Music is by Richard Rodney Bennett and cinematography by Christopher Challis.

Jan Van Rooyer (Krüger) arrives at the apartment of the lady he is having an affair with, only to find the police following him close behind. It appears that the lady, Jacqueline Cousteau (Presle), has been murdered and he is the prime suspect.

Another cracker-jack slice of British film noir produced by the brilliant Joseph Losey. Blind Date finds Losey on the sort of firm ground he thrives on, examining hot topics such as class consciousness, eroticism, political pot-boiling, corruption, misogyny and at the crux of the story there's a very intricate mystery to be solved. When Losey was at his best there was an edginess to his films, and this is no exception, the construction of the tale is akin to someone dangling a piece of red meat over a Lion's cage (or in this case a Cougar), only to keep pulling it away at the last second.

Hook - Line - Sinker.

It all begins in a jovial manner, Van Rooyer is so happy, skipping his way to his lover's apartment, the jazzy musical score soars and shrieks, then the tone changes considerably, Losey and his crew have offered a false dawn. It soon becomes apparent that Rooyer is something of an arrogant snot, a struggling and tortured painter, he's hard to empathise with as he gets leaned on first by Gordon Jackson's efficient copper, then the mighty presence of Stanley Baker as Inspector Morgan - with Welsh accent joyously in full effect, he's nursing a cold and drinking milk, but boyo this is a guy you don't want grilling you...

Cougarville.

Rest of the picture is predominantly told in flashback, how Rooyer and Cousteau came to meet, their initial sparring and eventual relationship, with the mature femme fatale lady wrapping the hapless painter around her finger. Losey sexes things up, really gets as much heat as he can into the coupling without bothering the censors, he even slots in a sex metaphor that Hitchcock would have approved of. Then the rug pulls begin, the can is opened, worms everywhere, or is it just smoke and mirrors?

Losey and Challis use every opportunity to use trusted film noir photographic techniques, but never in a lazy manner. Some of the isolated lighting used - particularly when Presle is holding court - is cheeky but potent with it, and the close ups, long takes and wide frames favoured by Losey ensure that no scene is merely being allowed to be ordinary. Baker, like Dirk Bogarde, was a classic Losey man, a meeting of minds that produced performances of steel and psychological intricacy. Yet it's not Baker who owns this film, it's Krüger, a multifaceted jumping-bean of a performance, simply terrific. As is the film itself, one of Losey's most under valued British treasures. 9/10

Stanley Baker and Hardy Krugar are the keys to the ups and downs of "Chance Meeting." The flashbacks are a drag, but at least they're necessary to the plot. And the hesitant, rather clunky ending doesn't help either. Nor does the imbalance between the central character (Hardy) and the convincing supporting cast.

But to the degree "Chance Meeting" succeeds, it does so via Stanley Baker's riveting crack detective. Not only is he in charge of the case, but of his role, his acting and, it seems, the movie itself. Who can imagine it without him? His absence from the flashbacks is the film's loss (Michiline Presle's acting saves them, however). Even when his given lines and plot twists let him down, he hangs in, his acting canceling the script's shortcomings in the same way his detective's s nasal spray routine gets him through doubts and challenges. But if Baker's strikingly in command, he seems all the more so because this is what the protagonist suspect lacks.

Whether Krugar's role, direction, or acting (probably all three) is at fault, there's no doubt that it's misaligned and unappealing. Perhaps there's more of the theatre than the cinema in his 'Angry Young Man' portrayal. Too often he seems bratty, defiant, manipulative, self-pitying, and generally obnoxious. His superior quips and mockery of his "bourgeois" female art buyer (his "chance" encounter) and subsequent "lover," offers immediate proof of his rudeness, and galling character. He comes off as a boy among adults, the least real of all the actors, and the most stereotypical. To boot, he seems more the hipster artist than the working class painter, more the mod misogynist than the avant-garde rebel, and more the pretentious charlatan than a convincing artist. Thus his disconnect from any inner reality, from his imposing pursuer, and from "Chance Meeting" itself.

The plot is pretty conventional Scotland Yard potboiler; Hardy Kruger suspected of a murder he didn't commit but the evidence looks bad. But the surprise of the film is a brilliant performance by Stanley Baker as the Police Inspector Morgan doing the investigation. Baker grew up in Wales near the home of the more famous Richard Burton, but he was every bit as good as an actor. His performance is tightly wound, with shafts of anger about the special treatment he is asked to give an upper class alternative suspect. Very different from the laid-back aristocrats that many films imagine populate the British police. It's a bit stagey and you won't find any of the car chases which litter so many police films. But the supporting cast are all good and Baker is a joy to watch.