User reviews

Does anybody know the correct aspect ratio for this film? It seems to be as mysterious as Mata Hari herself.

IMDb says 4:3, the same as the Video Dimensions (CK596) DVD package. However, the Video Dimensions disc presents the film at 1.77:1. The included trailer is 2.35:1. Scenes from the film in the trailer include material from the sides not in the film, suggesting that the film is, in fact, a 2.35:1 film cropped to 1.77:1 to avoid letter-boxing.

Or was the film shot at 4:3 and then cropped at the top and bottom for exhibition at other aspect ratios?

Adding to the confusion is that Amazon's French website lists two versions of the film at 1.66:1.

As for the film itself, after seeing it referenced in Jeanne Moreau's obituaries and after seeing Greta Garbo's 1931 version, I wanted to see Ms. Moreau's interpretation of the role. Like other great actresses, she will be best remembered for her major roles. It was a pleasure to see her here as well.

My rating of 7 is based on the fact that biopics often depict the highlights of the subject's life while fictionalizing much of the rest. I will leave it to the experts on Mata Hari's life to decide if her wartime activities depicted here are accurate.

Cinema's love story with the character of Mata Hari began only a few years after the execution by shooting squad of the famous spy. When Jeanne Moreau played, in 1964, her role in the film 'Mata Hari, agent H21' directed by her ex-husband Jean-Louis Richard, she was already following in the footsteps of famous actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. The story of Mata Hari fascinates because it contains romance, erotica, espionage, adventure, and it is therefore no wonder that it has inspired about 30 feature films and many dozens more of documentaries, series or television films. This French version from 1964 is interesting because it is made by leading filmmakers of the French Nouvelle Vague without being a Nouvelle Vague film. It feels more like an exercise by Truffaut (who is co-writer and producer) and his colleagues in a genre they admired (see Truffaut's relationship with Hitchcock, the auteur of many spy films).

"Mata Hari, agent H21" begins with an exotic Indian dance on stage in which the performer is Jeanne Moreau who embodies Mata Hari. The scene, quite daring for that time, will be remembered not only for the qualities of the performer but also for the trick used by the spy who transmits a coded message through the finger movements to her secret contact, who sits in the hall and notes numbers in sight to everyone around and of the viewers of the film. It doesn't matter that they will meet and talk directly at the end of the show, half an hour later. It's the first of many details that lead me to believe that the two accomplished screenwriters that were Richard and Truffaut didn't take the spy plot too seriously. Later in the film we will see Mata Hari writing down the six digits of the code of a safe containing secret documents on a poster of her own show and then forgetting it to the place where the break-in had taken place. Such an error on the part of a well-versed spy is hardly credible. The love story between Mata Hari and a young French officer isn't very believable either, especially since it doesn't work very well on screen. Jeanne Moreau is fascinating, Jean-Louis Trintignant has shown in many other films that he can successfully play roles of seducer, but together on the screen they fail to create a believable connection in this film.

It seems clear to me that the two filmmakers were interested in something else. First of all, they were experiencing with the very roles they assumed in the production of the film. Jean-Louis Richard had written (and would continue to write) some of the screenplays for some of Truffaut's best-known films. He had also appeared on the screen, in minor roles in some of them, but would devote himself to acting only two decades later. Here he is directing, this being one of the four films in total that he has directed in his entire career. Truffaut wrote the dialogues, and we cannot know to what extent he influenced the directorial conception. Jeanne Moreau dominates the screen. Her Mata Hari seems more a victim of a conspiracy than a treacherous spy, more a romantic than a seductress. The ending, in particular, is memorable. In the final scenes, of the arrest, trial and execution of the spy for Germany, the camera moves away from the heroine, and the style becomes what we would today call a docu-drama. The best scenes of this film are those in which we are immersed in the atmosphere of Paris and France during the First World War. Their quality is due to the cinematography signed by Michel Kelber and an approach that seems to want to apply the visual techniques of the Nouvelle Vague to a historical period that had happened half a century before. These bits of expressive cinema and the presence of Jeanne Moreau and Trintignant alongside, though not quite together, are the reasons why "Mata Hari, agent H21" deserves to be watched or re-watched even today.

Ne vous déplaise ,Jeanne Moreau is French whereas Mata was Javanese .But ,after all,why not?If it were not for her and Truffaut's script ,the movie would be completely forgotten (when it was aired yesterday on the cultural French channel,a lot of people had probably never heard about it.) Truffaut's script takes liberties with history,the love interest between Moreau and Trintignant was probably made from start to finish,or at least extremely embellished .

Truffaut had probably communicated his love for Hitchcock to the director;at least three scenes display that influence: Trintignant's briefcase tied to an armchair with handcuffs ,Moreau stealing documents in the officer's house,the crossing of the border.

Truffaut's favorites have cameos :Jean-Pierre Léaud(fortunately,his stint is brief,and I will be very grateful to him cause he does not utter a single world),Charles Denner,the lovely Marie Dubois (who had played the female supporting part in "Jules et Jim").

The last pictures show how romantic TRuffaut was!

Moreau is very well as the dancer-turned-German secret agent in a wartime Paris seething with secrets and betrayal. With the world at war, love was her weapon. The only men she couldn' t seduce were the 12 in the firing squad that ended her life. In 1964 this movie was among the best, just below Dr. Strangelove, My Fair Lady, Hamlet, Il vangelo secondo Matteo, Marnie, The Night of the Iguana, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Gertrud, Seven Days in May, La peau douce, Fail-Safe, Goldfinger O ibaba, The Best Man, Three outlaw samurai (Sanbiki no samurai), A Hard Day's Night, Zulu, The Train. Il deserto rosso, Charulata, Sedotta e abbandonata.

I thought for a moment it was Gale Sondergaard under the bejewelled crown, but no - it's Jeanne Moreau as the eponymous lady who charms the pants, literally, from the French soldiers from whom she exacts more than kisses. She lives well on the proceeds of her courtesanship, but she also augments that cash by working for the Bosch towards the end of the Great War enabling them to acquire useful French state secrets. She is cold and calculating until she encounters "Lasalle" (Jean-Louis Trintignant). There's something about him that permeates her hitherto impervious armour, and though that doesn't stop her using him, unusually she begins to care. That's dangerous thing for both of them, and when he discovers that she is still trying to tap up his superiors, he decides to abandon ship before he gets hurt - well emotionally, anyway. Physically, well some shrapnel soon lays him low and brings her to his side for a reconciliation, and from her perspective, a bit of a reassessment of her priorities. Is it all too late, though? The drama is portrayed in just a bit too staccato a fashion here and though I did think there was some chemistry between the two, the story unfolds in quite an episodic manner with little real emotion to explain why she connected with him, or even why she was up to no good in the first place. Some context on that score might have elicited a little more sympathy for her but it's not there so it's left to be a slightly disappointing soapy melodrama with espionage trimmings. I did quite enjoy it, but it could have been better.

Jean-Louis Richard contributed the screenplay to some first class films of Francois Truffaut notably 'La Peau Douce' and 'La Nuit Americaine'. Here he directs his former wife Jeanne Moreau in a Truffaut screenplay There are, needless to say, a few Hitchcockian touches whilst the scenes of Mata Hari's arrest and execution are brilliantly done. Mlle Moreau in the title role combines sophistication and sensuality and she is luminous in her scenes with Jean-Louis Trintignant. Amazingly Trintignant had to wait another twenty years before being directed by Truffaut in what turned out to the latter's final film. Splendid cinematography by Michel Kelber and Georges Delerue again works his magic as composer. As with previous versions starring Magda Sonja and Greta Garbo liberties have been taken but the 'legend' of Mata Hari has so muddied the waters that we have lost sight of the truth anyway. A strong supporting cast, great sense of period and the fascinating Moreau combine to make this both absorbing and entertaining.