Entrevista com a Morte

This is basically a mystery story, but the mystery itself and its solution are not very satisfying. The best is that in the mean time we get to see some character study. And Losey's mise-en-scene is above average, as usual.

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.

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.

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.