Chance Meeting

It's springtime in Mayfair and Dutch artist Hardy Kruger is having an affair with Micheline Presle. He's madly in love, but she's rather cold, and meet according to her schedule, like he's her dressmaker. He asks her to come away with him, but she refuses, and one day he finds her address and goes to her apartment to leave a note saying he can't take it any more. The door is open, so he goes in. Soon policemen are swarming the place and Detective Inspector Stanley Baker is asking a lot of questions, because The woman whose apartment this is has been murdered. There she is in the bedroom. Would you care to explain yourself, sir. Nothing more frightening than a policeman being polite about a corpse.

Joseph Losey, a very chilly director of emotionally and intellectually challenging movies, handles this in his usual icy manner, with Baker growing more and more tigerish as Kruger keeps insisting he didn't kill her, but unable to offer any proof. The audience is on Kruger's side. We saw him enter the apartment, We follow him around until the corpse is shown to him, and we feel his confusion; Baker's growing anger puts us on any side but his. Losey, however, is not on the side of anyone in particular. Both men seek the truth, and that's what's important.