Eine Stadt zittert vor Solo

Solo is curiously contemporary in its theme. The film tracks down young left-wing militants who carry out collective attacks against the financial bourgeoisie, literally massacring a dozen people. The film was shot shortly after 1968, but the theme is still very much alive. They are hunted down by the police, and by Jean-Pierre Mocky himself, perfect in character and with a lot of charisma (he had offered the role to Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, who turned it down, so he did it himself), who is the brother of one of them, but he is a jewel thief of rich people, so rather than killing, he steals.

Jean-Pierre Mocky builds a story in which he finds himself helping his younger brother, who is one of these militants. The film contains some brilliant, modern-sounding lines of dialogue, notably in the scenes between Jean-Pierre Mocky and Anne Deleuze, the only female militant in the terrorist group.

As usual, Mocky constructs a story in which everything moves very fast, with no unnecessary shots, no useless seconds and multiple chases intertwined: Jean-Pierre Mocky tries to find his brother before the police do, Anne Deleuze tries to warn the group who are trying to regroup, while the police advance and close in on them. All this is perfectly interwoven by screenwriters Jean-Pierre Mocky and Alain Moury.