Without Apparent Motive

Good solid thriller with fine central performance from Jean Louis Trintignant and very decent score from Morricone. Taught, interesting, involving and amusing from start to finish this good looking film has much to offer including some strange casting and an understated but sleazy background.

Erich Segal, writer of Love Story and person responsible for the screen play of Yellow Submarine(!) plays an off the wall astrologer and ex-wife of Trintignant and then wife of Chabrol turns up with bulging bust looking extremely sexy. Singer Sacha Distel is another surprising performer and does well as a TV presenter. The action takes place in and around Nice and more particularly around its harbour as a sniper begins to kill, seemingly at random, or 'Without Apparent Motive'.

Jean Louis Trintignant is terrific in this well-plotted and stylish thriller. An investigation of apparently motiveless murders really hits close to home when the former mistress of the detective becomes a victim just minutes after talking to him. The solution to the murders is utterly logical and utterly surprising. Trintgnant has the same magnetic screen presence he had in "Z", but here he actually gets to do things like deliver lines! Dominique Sanda provides the eye-candy. For my money, this was one of the two best thrillers of 1972, the other being Hitchcock's "Frenzy." It doesn't appear to be available on videotape, but if you get a chance to see it, don't miss it.

... and his best.All that he made afterward can easily be dismissed as rubbish.A journalist -he also wrote words for some songs- he dreamed of the American cinema because he spent some of his youth on the other side of the pond.

Actually,we're closer to Agatha Christie's whodunit than to American film noir.It's not a problem.It's better to have a good imitation of a detective story à la "and then there were none" than a pale reflection of Wise or Hawks.One by one,people who did something nasty in the past are slain and detective Trintignant is here to solve the mystery ,a mystery which entertains the audience till the very end .Outside Trintignant,the cast is very odd,including French crooner Sacha Distel,as an emcee of a stupid radio contest (a wonderful spoof) ,Segal, who wrote "love story" ,Chabrol's then-wife (and ex-wife of Trintignant)and best actress Stephane Audran,Italian not yet sex symbol Laura Antonelli ,here cast against type,Jean-Pierre Marielle...

Very entertaining.

I saw this for the first time recently aft reading a glowing review by Coventry.

Well, this movie is indeed a solid thriller with a good mystery.

The plot in short - A police detective investigates a series of unexplained killings of unconnected people by a mystery sniper. One of the victim is an ex girlfriend of the detective who tries very hard to find a missing link between all these murders. Though the detective have linked the victims to money laundering, narcotics and prostitution, nothing adds up to a motive for murdering them.

The movie has good locations n a decent musical score but the performances are top notch.

I like the short hair, slim babe, Carla Gravina.

Lemme check out more movies starring her.

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.