Without Apparent Motive

I had seen this film in a cinema, years ago, when I was a youngster. Now, I have bought the video in a 2nd hand shop, and...

I has been delighted again with:

a) The plot: good thriller about a snipper who kills several high society persons.

b) The actors: Jean-Louis Trintigant is superb as a policeman,engaged in a difficult case. And he runs top speed...

c) The music: Morricone's score is perfect. It goes along very well and underline top moments.

To summarize: highly commandable film.

In the city of Nice, in the beautiful and sunny French Riviera, a sniper cold-heartedly assassinates four people in less than 48 hours. There isn't an obvious connection between the victims, but since they are all upper-class society members, chief-commissioner Carella senses a lot of pressure to catch the killer fast and to prevent further murders from happening.

It's been such a long since I watched a good old-fashioned, authentic giallo! Okay, so "Without Apparent Motive" is French instead of Italian, and a sniper rifle isn't exactly a traditional giallo murder weapon, but still I feel it qualifies as a bona fide giallo! After all, many delicious trademarks are well-represented, like the convoluted whodunit plot, a mysterious but merciless killer, a struggling police commissioner and many gorgeous women. Dominique Sanda, Carla Gravina and especially Stéphane Audran look lethal and incredibly seductive in their roles.

Although named "Without Apparent Motive", the assassin certainly has a motive for the murders he/she commits, and the gradual and suspenseful revelation of the motive is definitely the strongest quality of the movie. Trintignant plays in his very own typical love-or-hate-him style. I always wonder if he just acts arrogant, or really is arrogant. The locations and scenery are amazing, the great Ennio Morricone wrote another fantastic score, and many sequences are masterfully photographed.

The movie is based on a book by McBain. Never having read the book I can't comment on the fidelity of the adaptation. However, the movie deals with some themes dear to McBain's heart : the difficulty and responsibility of detective work ; the speed at which a problem can turn into a circus, a stampede or a political affair ; the difficulty of policing a modern city where almost all citizens (good or bad) can hide, morph and reinvent themselves. (If you're living in a large city : would you be willing to swear that the kindly gentleman sitting on a park bench and feeding the pigeons is indeed a retired high school teacher, and not an Israeli spy master or a judo instructor kicked out of the Navy Seals for excessive brutality ?) There is also a nicely satirical edge to the work.

The translation to French society works well and the sun-drenched city of Nice is nicely juxtaposed with the relentlessly "noir" atmosphere. The masterful Morricone music evokes a general sense of wrongness and menace.

It should be noted that Trintignant's inspector Carella is not an agreeable man : he alternates between gruff boorishness and solitary misanthropy, while exuding a smoldering, barely contained anger. One senses that any pimply teenager foolish enough to go "oink, oink" in his vicinity would become the owner of a bullet through the brain in two minutes flat. As an approach to community police work this would not be entirely without merit - but still.

An exceptional movie construction, masterminding the script, the actors, the music and the location. Each scene, per day and murder, and each actor's performance leave vivid pictures in my mind: the plunge in the swimming-pool, the deceived look of Gravina in her love-sex affair with Trintignant, the full power run of Trintignant around the Nice harbor, the final death posture of the murderer. Jean-Louis Trintignant camps a local French Riviera inspector, very self-image oriented as are most of the featured residents of the Cote d'Azur. A series of murders with no evident link is followed by Trintignant, each one filling a piece of the puzzle and bringing him closer to the murderer. Labro, the film director, shoots real-street-life and picks up the best essence of each of his actors. Beyond Trintignant, each other actor seems to have the second role while playing their cast with their own personality. Labro could have been another Jean-Pierre Melville and his magnificent "Le Cercle Rouge". This "Sans Mobile Apparent" showed all the promising ingredients needed by the French cinema to find a respected place in action movies. Labro followed up with "l'Heritier", not bad, far not as good, the magic having disappeared. My biggest regret: "Sans Mobile Apparent" is as yet unavailable in DVD and does not play on TV anymore.

A sniper is killing off a series of people who seem to be connected in some way. A detective investigating the case seems to come into contact with the victims shortly before they are dispatched.

This is a stylish French murder-mystery set in Nice. It's well served on the acting personnel front. Jean-Louis Trintignant is very good in the central role as the brooding detective; while there is interesting support from others, such Stéphane Audran (leading lady from several Claude Chabrol films) and Jean-Pierre Marielle (who played a memorable flamboyant homosexual private investigator in Dario Argento's giallo Four Flies on Grey Velvet). Another welcome addition is Ennio Morricone's contribution; once again his score is excellent and adds to the atmosphere greatly. The dark story is offset effectively by its beautiful sunny locations too. It adds a bit of glamour to the grime.

Sans Mobile Apparent is a well-constructed mystery with good plotting. It's a movie that is screaming out for a DVD transfer, it's one of the stronger French thrillers from the 70's.