L'enquête de l'inspecteur Morgan

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.

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.

It can sometimes be interesting to study the early work of directors who were later to emerge as important figures in cinema. Some show little indication of what is to come (Carol Reed's "Bank Holiday " for instance) while with others the fingerprints are all there (Hitchcock's "The Lodger" and David Lynch's "Eraserhead"). Joseph Losey falls somewhere between these two extremes. An early work such as "Blind Date" has a competence and clearheaded sense of narrative flow that place it on a higher level than most B-style thrillers to emerge from British studios in the '50's but there is little of the original stamp that was to mark his later work such as "The Servant", "The Go-between" and "Accident". These films provide fascinating commentaries that an outsider from the USA brought to bear on the British class system. There is a little in "Blind Date" about the social hierarchy within the British police force, but this is peripheral to Losey's main task of presenting a neat little thriller well. He keeps the tension going nicely to begin with, with a young Dutch artist visiting a flat where he expects to find a woman he has been having a liaison with, only to find himself soon embroiled with the police. The script has a neat way of evading what is going on until some way into the film. Some of the flashbacks go on for rather too long and are somewhat weakened by a rather wooden performance by Micheline Presle as the woman of mystery. Hardy Kruger, on the other hand, as the young Dutchman is excellent. We really identify with his frustration at finding himself in a situation that is beyond his comprehension and control. As the main detective Stanley Baker plays cat and mouse with his customary skill. "Blind Date" is in so sense an important or significant film, but the fact that it was competently made by a director who was later to produce some outstanding works of British cinema makes it worth a look. There are two other good reasons for watching - photography by Christopher Challis and music by Richard Rodney Bennett - both considerable artists in their respective fields.

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

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.