The Spies

In 1957 the Cold War was in full swing, "The Bomb" was a thing of terror, the arms race was still a brand new concept and international paranoia was running rampant. It was the perfect atmosphere for Henri-Georges Clouzot to release LES ESPIONS (THE SPIES) upon the world. A less celebrated film than the director's other films of the period, THE SPIES nevertheless wages a war of nerves upon a level equal to that in THE WAGES OF FEAR or DIABOLIQUE, and keeps its sense of humour as well.

Running out of patients, money and hope, psychiatrist Dr. Malik (Gérard Séty) makes a deal with the devil. In this case the devil presents himself as an American Intelligence Officer (Paul Carpenter) who offers five million francs if Malik will keep a special guest, identified only as "Alex", for a few days at his rundown sanitarium. Malik is told that this person is of interest to foreign powers and that there may be strangers looking for him. The desperate Malik accepts one million francs as a deposit, a bundle of bills that grows increasingly heavy as he awakes the next morning to find that his staff has been enigmatically replaced during the night and that the strangers he was forewarned of have begun popping up even before the arrival of the mysterious "Alex".

From this point on neither Malik, nor the audience, know what is true or who to believe. Both the friendly American, Mr. Cooper, (Sam Jaffe) and the affable Eastern European, Kiminsky, (Peter Ustinov) ooze menace from the chinks in their veneer of civility, and nothing and no one can be trusted - not the child playing in the road, the bartender across the street and certainly not the mysterious Alex (Curd Jürgens) hiding his identity behind dark glasses and leather gloves. Yet, for everyone involved except Malik, all of this is business as usual, and the sheer ridiculousness of this contrast brings a dark humour to the proceedings.

In fact the greatest weakness of THE SPIES comes in the film's last fifteen minutes, when Clouzot unwisely lifts the veil of uncertainty and makes all clear. There is no great revelation that stuns the audience, only explanation which washes away the wonderfully absurd grays that have fuelled the film up to this point, in favour of a black and white clarity that weakens the film. Clouzot attempts in the film's final two scenes to recover what he imprudently surrendered a dozen minutes earlier, but THE SPIES would have been a far finer film if the last reel had never existed.

Less easily seen than some of Clouzot's other work, THE SPIES has been given a respectable release on DVD in the UK.

This is HG Clouzot's most ambitious work ,one of the most demanding and complex movie of a soon-to-be -nouvelle-vague France.Let's put it straight:although modern to a fault,"les espions" has nothing to do with the nouvelle vague:no ""free" camera here",a bunch of "old actors", a very elaborate screenplay.The problem is that it has nothing to do with the "old guard" either.The "story" flouts conventions,and HGC does not give a damn if his audience cannot catch up with it.The film was bound to be a commercial failure,particularly with an audience who got enthusiastic over "le salaire de la peur'(wages of fear) and "les diaboliques" .

The starting point may recall "the diaboliques": in this latter work,a seedy boarding-school;in "les espions" ,a doctor short of the readies,whose clinic is sinking.So why not gladly agreeing a mysterious man's proposal?One million francs,if he puts "them" up?Who are "they"?That's how the doctor's(Gerard Sety) nightmare begins.He is caught up in the system,and a lot of threatening characters (played by topnotch international actors:Curd Jurgens,Martita Hunt,Sam Jaffe)begin to show up:every time he thinks he begins to understand,the truth eludes him-Gérard Séty 's character predates Laurence Harvey's in "the Mandchourian candidate" and even Michael Douglas's in "the game".HGC watched the spies as if they were microbes under a microscope.It's a rather unpleasant view. Vera Clouzot-the unforgettable heroine of "les diaboliques" - appears in the role of a deaf and dumb neurotic woman(She was to die of an heart attack three years later).

Clouzot 's health began to deteriorate during the sixties.After "les espions" he was to make only two works "la vérité"(the truth) one of Brigitte Bardot's best parts and "la prisonnière".He made only 11 movies in all,which may not seem much,but most of them are among the best works French cinema has produced.

In common, I would guess, with anyone who had seen and admired the earlier work of Clouzot beginning with Le Corbeau and culminating in Les Diaboliques, I approached this with taste buds primed for major salivation only to be disappointed. This has to be a one-off, a thriller sans thrills. At times it resembles one of those creaky British B-pictures of the thirties and forties so that you almost expect Wilfrid Lawson to emerge out of a pea-souper and stare meaningfully at Kynaston Reeves. For reasons best known to himself Clouzot even finds work for Paul Carpenter, surely the most inept and wooden actor on either side of the Channel, matched only by Laurence Harvey and Alan Lake. Having bought it on DVD I shall, I suppose, watch it again on the off chance that there really is something I'm missing besides a few brain cells shed in the time it took to unspool.

Les Espions or "Spies" as it was released here in the US in '58 is both a crazy film and a crazily efficient film. Its one of these movies that somehow manages to work as both a genre spy film AND a parody of the genre spy film at the same time. Oh don't get me wrong--it is NOT a comedy, but again both a straightforward and at times (especially in the second half) circular ride about the various secret agents, double agent spies, and possibly murderous triple agents that suddenly start to wreck havoc on the everyday life of this doctor/manager of a local mental hospital. This poor guy is getting drunk in his local pub one night and rather groggily moaning about how local politics are ruining the lives of his honest poor working countrymen but nobody's got enough common sense to either set the politicians straight or are too corrupt themselves to do anything for anyone else---somehow this is enough for this one other guy there to make the drunk doctor an offer he can't refuse---see he's a secret agent with a secret division and he will pay the good doctor a million dollars to shelter this east German defector who's got some sort of nuclear secret weapon or something that will change the fate of their country, blah, blah, blah but he's got to protect him from everyone who will come after him--the doctor more or less agrees when he sees the million dollars stuffed into his pocket and more or less stops listening, goes home, passes out, and wakes up to find....his staff has been replaced by two henchmen and a very intimidating woman who all insist they're working for the secret agent.

Doctor soon finds patients who all insist they're working for the secret agent, barflies in his favorite bar who all insist they're working for the secret agent, neighboors wandering around the grounds of the hospital who all insist they're working for the secret agent...and well an entire community seemingly made out of nothing but professional "spies" all set on inserting themselves into the life of this good doctor. Before too long the actual German guy himself turns up and who of course will turn out to be...well i'm not going to say.

Who can the poor doctor trust? Nobody but the mute woman who seems to have a rather large crush on our good doctor and the heavily sedated gastric patient who were both there before the night the secret agent made him this million dollar propisition it seems. This doesn't stop hefty, overly friendly, and creepily passive aggressive Russian Peter Ustinov--and a constantly rationalizing and fear mongering older professor from constantly turning up and explaining to the good doctor just what is what and whom is whom, and generally causing confusion. When the German man does turn up and the doctor does do his best to shelter him amidst the serious chaos. (even tho the German man can very much take care of himself--way way better then the well meaning but completely over his head good doctor can) and well things just spiral more and more out of control plot wise from there. Suffice it to say that the three people i just mentioned in addition to the fake receptionist are all serving cross purposes and are constantly leaving red herrings and massive doublespeak in their wake causing the good doctor to have a hard time trying to keep up with what the latest info is that he needs to know.

This is all actually fun for a good hour or so but then the film more or less descends into a little bit of confusion as too many things the various people are telling the good doctor are taken to be the truth or taken to be lies. I realize the fun is supposed to be in figuring out the truth alongside the good doctor but when he eventually does and tries to do everything he can about it---it all starts to seem rather pointless. Also the longer this goes on the more you want to ask yourself exactly why is he still trying to get this all straight again? the money is already in your pocket bro--just take it and run! (which is of course exactly why the first secet agent picked him in the bar back in the beginning) Questions about motivation aside--the ending leaves you with a good nasty jolt, and that queasy expression you see on the good doctor's face will definitely mirror your own as the deeper implications of the doctor's position at the end of the movie sink in. Of course I don't actually know if that will be as true for you as it was for me, i thought it was a really effective ending---but I also really like ironic Twilight Zone style endings in which the hero doesn't exactly get what he wants but sort of achieves his goals even if they're far different then the way he'd imagined it to be. Its not exactly a realistic ending cause i doubt anything in this movie is realistic but i feel like its a smarter ending then most of the espionage movies of this era usually get, its an ending that's actually quite worthy of the best of Hitchcock himself (of whose work this movie truly and seriously resembles) (on a side note this movie also more or less reminds me as a whole of the long forgotten 1980's Donald Sutherland spy caper "The Trouble With Spies" which while played for laughs does in fact echo this plot in several key ways.)

Master Clouzot strikes again as in le Corbeau, another master piece which is invisible today. During some good old days French TV was showing these master pieces. Now, these master pieces are worth of a sacrifice from the all mighty editing firms and should be availiable to connoisseurs!