MovieChat Forums > Les espions (1957) Discussion > Fantastic film (slight spoilers)

Fantastic film (slight spoilers)


Right from the beginning the film established character and scene really well and the b&w photography lent it additional atmosphere. The film is an examination of secret agents/spies and it brings up all sorts of themes such as identity, trust, certainty, morality and ethics. Amidst this is a psychiatric doctor, cynical in outlook and weary from trying to get money to secure his clinic. For a large sum of money he agrees to hide an agent only to find his clinic and village is overrun by agents looking for the man he's agreed to conceal. There are moments of hilarity in this very dark film; dark it is. Even at its conclusion when the madness of events seems behind him and one of his patients, a mute female names Lucie, seems cured, he is reminded in a menacing way of the world of secret agents with which he is entwined forevermore and the deaths of two men to which he was privy.

Some great lines from Alex, the man the doctor has agreed to conceal, on the life of the agent:

Like a writer you forbid to write. Like a scientist you expel from his laboratory. Where is his family, his friends? If you're and immigrant, where's your country? Most of them are expatriate, unwanted people trying to live ... You're lucky enough to like in a world where when a woman sleeps with you, it's not to find out what you did the day before. Where words have the same meaning as in the dictionary. You can drink till you drop without fearing the last drink is poisoned."

I give my respect to those who have earned it; to everyone else, I'm civil.

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