Tiré à part

This is the most elaborate story of revenge that I can recall seeing. The emotional tone is very chilling; "la vengeance se mange froid" as the French say. Terence Stamp, fresh from his exertions in Priscilla, plays Edward Lamb, the owner of a small publishing house who conceives a plot against a novelist, Nicolas Fabry, who did a destructive act thirty years before that resulted in a suicide and much misery for Stamp.

The presentation of the steps of the scheme is pretty absorbing. Lamb must write another version of Fabry's new novel, under the name of a writer killed in the war, to make it appear that Fabry has committed plagiary. A good part of the satisfaction the viewer feels comes from the evocation of the multitude of plagiarized books, songs, paintings and so forth that have come to light in recent years. Bernard Rapp, the director, is a veteran of the French publishing world--he edited the Larousse Dictionary of Film. I am satisfied with Rapp's command of the book business but less so with his way with actors; Daniel Mesguich as the hapless Fabry seems rudderless in all the goings on while Terence Stamp displays no emotion at all: the part does not call for a samurai.

A good companion film would be Orson Welles's F for Fake, which has the benefit of being very funny in places. Clifford Irving was quite a guy.