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A lateral pan followed without pause by a zoom introduces the dilapidated asylum like a memory of Le Corbeau, the suffocating terror of the Occupation has become the suffocating farce of the Cold War. The "rat trap" setting is a mental clinic suddenly crowded with undercover agents (the MacGuffin is nuclear), the doctor (Gérard Séty) is weak and apolitical, thus the perfect patsy for dueling networks. A Soviet kleptomaniac (Peter Ustinov) and a CIA chief moonlighting as a Shakespeare professor (Sam Jaffe) are the chimerical East/West foes, old acquaintances. Platinum-haired Curd Jürgens behind inky-black specs is a Mabusean memento, Martita Hunt in matronly whites with cigarillo points to The Lady Vanishes. Behind the manipulations is the ailing American colonel (Paul Carpenter) sickened by the smell of blood, "a bad soldier" yet the closest thing to an idealist. "Certain doors shouldn't be opened, my friend." Henri-Georges Clouzot's fortuitous conjunction with Lang doesn't end with the title: Even ocarina chimes trigger unease in this excoriation of neutrality, where characters are perpetually monitoring each other, trying on and doffing off identities, crawling into hermetic spaces and falling prey to "accidents." (The director's pet sacrificial lamb, Véra Clouzot, is contemplated through a peephole first on the floor of her cell surrounded by bonbon wrappers, then frantically shredding a pillow.) The collapsing pretenses build jovially to an image of knowledge warped (a contaminated brain must be destroyed, cries the doomed scientist), the stinger lays out the atom-age quandary between being a mute witness and learning that "everything is recorded." (Huston advances the sardonic line of thought in The Kremlin Letter.) With O.E. Hasse, Gabrielle Dorziat, Louis Seigner, Pierre Larquey and Jean Brochard. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |