Dir: Joseph Losey | Cast: Hardy Krüger, Stanley Baker, Micheline Presle and directed by Joseph Losey.
Joseph Losey and fellow blacklistee Ben Barzman joined Stanley Baker for the first time in this stylish if talky crime film.
The scenes between Hardy Kruger and Micheline Presle as Jaqueline Cousteau who plays Losey’s habitual glacial continental actress – greeting Kruger with the come-on line “I always wondered what Holland exported apart from tulips, now I know!” – have an erotic tension Losey never achieved again; while Baker’s friction with his superiors continues his perennial obsession with Britain’s class system which came to full fruition in ‘The Servant’.
Availing himself of Britain’s best technicians Losey as usual avails himself of a classy British cameraman in the form of Christopher Challis and a snazzy jazz score. @RichardChatten