Os Espiões

This is HG Clouzot's most ambitious work ,one of the most demanding and complex movie of a soon-to-be -nouvelle-vague France.Let's put it straight:although modern to a fault,"les espions" has nothing to do with the nouvelle vague:no ""free" camera here",a bunch of "old actors", a very elaborate screenplay.The problem is that it has nothing to do with the "old guard" either.The "story" flouts conventions,and HGC does not give a damn if his audience cannot catch up with it.The film was bound to be a commercial failure,particularly with an audience who got enthusiastic over "le salaire de la peur'(wages of fear) and "les diaboliques" .

The starting point may recall "the diaboliques": in this latter work,a seedy boarding-school;in "les espions" ,a doctor short of the readies,whose clinic is sinking.So why not gladly agreeing a mysterious man's proposal?One million francs,if he puts "them" up?Who are "they"?That's how the doctor's(Gerard Sety) nightmare begins.He is caught up in the system,and a lot of threatening characters (played by topnotch international actors:Curd Jurgens,Martita Hunt,Sam Jaffe)begin to show up:every time he thinks he begins to understand,the truth eludes him-Gérard Séty 's character predates Laurence Harvey's in "the Mandchourian candidate" and even Michael Douglas's in "the game".HGC watched the spies as if they were microbes under a microscope.It's a rather unpleasant view. Vera Clouzot-the unforgettable heroine of "les diaboliques" - appears in the role of a deaf and dumb neurotic woman(She was to die of an heart attack three years later).

Clouzot 's health began to deteriorate during the sixties.After "les espions" he was to make only two works "la vérité"(the truth) one of Brigitte Bardot's best parts and "la prisonnière".He made only 11 movies in all,which may not seem much,but most of them are among the best works French cinema has produced.

There's something about black comedies played very dryly that appeals to me. I'm often laughing at action and never quite sure if I'm supposed to be. That's what I found myself doing pretty consistently while watching Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Spies, a tale of madness in Paris, a mixture of Hitchcockian wrong-man tropes and surrealism that combines better than Hitchcock's own Spellbound.

Doctor Malic (Gerard Sety) is approached by American Colonel Howard (Paul Carpenter). There's a mysterious figure, Alex (Curd Jurgens), that needs to be hidden in Malic's neighborhood, and Howard feels that Malic is the perfect man for the kind of discretion that job of protecting Alex will require. With the promise of a million francs, money Malic will be able to prop up his failing clinic and help his patients, mostly the mute Lucie (Vera Clouzot), he agrees. And everything pretty much immediately spirals out of control.

The people who work at his local café are replaced within hours by strangers who only give cryptic responses about where those they've replaced have gone. His own nurse is replaced. Malic is beset by two new potential patients, Sam Cooper (Sam Jaffe) and Michel Kaminsky (Peter Ustinov). Alex shows up and hides in one of the clinic rooms as the place gets swarmed with strangers, all asking him cryptic questions, giving him cryptic answers to his own questions, and generally just getting in his hair. He tries to keep his business running, but things are increasingly frantic as things get increasingly confused.

And this is where the contrast between the film's tone and its content turns the film into a comedy. It's pretty black (not quite gallows humor), and it's delivered so dryly that it's almost British. It's really just Malic trying to keep his cool and composure in the face of increasingly ridiculous circumstances and changes around him as everyone tries to manipulate him into giving up Alex. The biggest effort is by Sam who tries to convince Malic that Howard, whom Malic cannot find any trace of at the American embassy, actually made a mistake about protecting Alex at all. So, Malic should give up Alex and Howard would certainly agree if he could be found.

Malic can't believe anyone, and he's increasingly at his wit's end to try and figure out whom he should trust, if anyone. Alex is of no help, being as cryptic as anyone else, and Malic flounders (in composed physical form) from one event to the next, all while Lucie observes most of what's going on and can't communicate what she sees in any way shape or form.

Who is Alex and why does he need protecting? There are twists and turns, but ultimately it's just a MacGuffin in the proud tradition of Hitchcock, touching on a generic approach to the dominate energy power of the day to paint a portrait of impending doom should the wrong hands get their hands on Alex, who may not even be the guy they're actually looking for. Who knows?

What seems to be a straight forward spy story on the outside is really more of a portrait of madness within a dream state. Malic seems to be jerking from one section of a dream to the next, only tangential details mattering as connective tissue, in particular business around a match box which seems vitally important early and gets dismissed with a single word later. It's part and parcel of Malic trying to figure out this sea of mysteries that almost never seem to have actual answers. There's a certain John le Carre aspect to it all in some dialogue that indicates the entire spy-life is empty and without meaning, as well.

This isn't one of Clouzot's greatest achievements, but it's a complicated trifle of a black spy comedy. I think it might end up taking things too seriously in the end, but it's a fun ride that probably needs the right kind of audience to appreciate it. The kind of audience that likes dry, sardonic humor. I'm that kind of guy, and I got a real kick out of it.

The head doctor of a failing sanatorium accepts a million francs from a mysterious government agent to harbour a new fake patient. This new inmate is said to be an inventor of a new devastating nuclear device, as a consequence, a swarm of international spies are drawn to the hospital.

Les Espions is a film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot who was tagged as the French Hitchcock before that term was applied later to Claude Chabrol. He rose to prominence with films such as the suspense classic Les Diaboliques (1955). Les Espions is a much less well-known film, in fairness this is probably partially as a result of it being a less successful end product. It has a much more ambiguous tone to it, with it starting out for the most part as a black comedy, which by the end turns deadly serious. It's an unusual combination and one which I'm not sure entirely works, with the sillier story elements working against the more serious undertones. I actually thought the ending was very good and the darker aspects more successful but I felt they were lessened a little by the more light-hearted comic tone that made up much of the earlier part of the film, which was a sort of spies vs. spies scenario with the hapless doctor in the middle constantly wondering who can be trusted? I think this is one of those movies which would be improved on a re-watch, given that once you know what it isn't as much as what it is, I expect it will be much easier to get into its rhythm and get on board with its unusual tone. On first viewing I found this to be somewhat uneven, yet aspects of it definitely left me intrigued. Even if the whole doesn't fit together perfectly, this is still certainly a film with a bit of originality.

This intense study of suspicion and intrigue is devoted to the theme of 'whom can you trust?', with the answer being 'no one'. Henri-Georges Clouzot was a true master of suspense, known as 'the French Hitchcock', and he decided here to study spies in the way that an entomologist studies beetles, watching them scurry and turn over on their backs and die. Here, numerous people lie sweating in bed, many of them die, and all are betraying one another. They scurry around as if they smell something, and maybe they do, but often it is poison. One fires bullets through a door at an unknown enemy, several kill their deputies or assistants or proteges, and everyone is nervous. The Russians and the Americans both want to kill a physicist who knows too much. All of this comes to roost in a dilapidated rotting psychiatric asylum with only two patients, one mute woman played by Clouzot's wife Vera, giving one of the most powerful performances in the film without saying anything. The central character, superbly harried and worried and greedily noble, is played by Gerard Sety, to perfection. One minute he is grabbing a million, the next he is giving it away to save the world. Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham in David Lean's 'Great Expectations') is so creepy you will have no hair left on the back of your neck at the end of the film. O. E. Hasse is wonderful in a small but crucial part. Kurt Jurgens is powerful, massive, behind his sunglasses which he wears indoors as either a prisoner or a patient, one is for long not sure which. Peter Ustinov is sinister and menacing, not to be trifled with, always in an overcoat and greasily bearded. Sam Jaffe and Paul Carpenter are eerie and menacing, while vacillating between being heroes and villains: which is trying to kill which? Who is good? Who is bad? What is really going on? The complexities are so intricate, and the betrayals so compulsive that one realizes this is not just a thriller, it is a scientific study of just what its title says: 'spies', those deeply psychologically disturbed people whose sole restless compulsion is to search and betray. What a dark, fascinating, eerily photographed film, absolutely glistening with deceit in a kind of perennial dusk.

Following the commercial failure of 'Mystere Picasso', director Henri-Georges Clouzot turned to a cold war thriller by Czech writer Egon Hoskovsky. I have not read the novel so cannot judge just how loose an adaptation it is. According to Stanislas Steeman with whom he worked twice, Clouzot ''would build something having demolished any resemblance to the original.''

This is not great Clouzot to be sure but still has touches of a master film-maker with his grasp of 'light' and pacing. There is of course the blacker-than-black humour and the usual collection of colourful but morally vacuous characters played here by some of the best in the business.

Into Dr. Malic's delapidated psychiatric clinic come Peter Ustinov as Kaminsky and Sam Jaffe as Cooper, both of them spies posing as patients and Martita Hunt, another spy, posing as a replacement nurse. There are two genuine patients in residence one of whom is a morphine addict and the other a deaf-mute. Curd Jurgens turns up as Alex but he might actually be Vogel, a nuclear scientist whose dreadful new formula is the 'Macguffin' everyone is after. The real Vogel turns up towards the end in the person of the excellent 0. E. Hasse.

I am impressed with the excellent French of Sam Jaffe and Martita Hunt who are mercifully not 'dubbed'. Miss Hunt's portrayal is outrageous and utterly riveting. The performance that lingers longest is that of Clouzot's then wife Vera who is simply stunning as Lucie the deaf-mute.

One does not really know whether the changes of tone from satire to dark drama here are intentional or accidental and although they can be somewhat disorientating, this bizarre film still succeeds as a piece of entertainment.

Following the excellent 'La Verité' nothing would ever be the same for Clouzot after the sudden death of Vera in 1960 and the totally unjustified criticisms of his work from the arrogant New Ripple brigade.

It is said that a work of art reflects its creator. What that says about Henri-Georges Clouzot the man I shudder to think but let us be grateful for the films this complex individual has given us.