In the 70s and 80s many directors were striving to obtain the title of "biggest Alfred Hitchcock fan-boy/copycat", but the podium surely existed of Brian DePalma, Richard Franklin and François Truffaut. The latter is undeniably a multi-talented film maker all by himself ("Fahrenheit 451" and "The Bride Wore Black" speak for themselves), but this attempt to bring the ultimate homage to the one and only Master of Suspense is a big disappointment. The script is based on an American novel, but set in Southern France and centering on Hitchcock's personal favorite subject; - namely a fugitive man wrongfully accused of murder and trying to clear his name (even though here all the dirty work is done by his secretary) while the corpses keep piling up.
Truffaut puts a lot of tributes in his final project, like also to the film-noir cinema of the 40s. The black & white cinematography is stunning, but the treatment of the women in this film is downright infuriating. Trintignant's character, not exactly a handsome Casanova, is constantly rude to his secretary and slaps her in the face, but she only becomes more and more faithful to him. That sort of disgusting discrimination isn't tolerable in the 1980s. The identity of the killer is far too easy to guess, and even more stupid is the fact that the prime suspect is supposedly unfindable by the police, but simple hides in the backroom of his office the entire time.
Truffaut puts a lot of tributes in his final project, like also to the film-noir cinema of the 40s. The black & white cinematography is stunning, but the treatment of the women in this film is downright infuriating. Trintignant's character, not exactly a handsome Casanova, is constantly rude to his secretary and slaps her in the face, but she only becomes more and more faithful to him. That sort of disgusting discrimination isn't tolerable in the 1980s. The identity of the killer is far too easy to guess, and even more stupid is the fact that the prime suspect is supposedly unfindable by the police, but simple hides in the backroom of his office the entire time.