Una grieta en el espejo

The pale beauty of Juliette Greco had always intrigued me. This movie of ill-starred love, lust and violence with gripping courtroom scenes (complete with re-enactment of the crime at the site)etched itself uncomfortably into my memory. That Greco often stars as a tragic anti-heroine may have something to do with her origins in the Languedoc region of France of unhappy history (cf. the Albigensian persecutions). The handsome young Bradford Dillman is a great foil to Greco's acting talents. Another under-appreciated actor, he reveals his great depth in other films such as Circle of Deception, where he portrays a betrayed secret agent used as a pawn by his superiors and Compulsion, where he plays a megalomaniacal intellectual out to prove the validity Nietzche's idea of a "superman" who is privileged to cull the human race of "unworthies" (based on the play "The Rope" of which Hitchcock made an earlier execrable film version).