Every promise fulfilled: after "du Rififi A Tokyo ","Symphonie Pour Un Massacre " is the great thriller Deray threatened to make ; abetted by two first-class writers ,Claude Sautet ,whose second and third works ("Classes Tous Risques " and "L'Arme A Gauche") should be considered films noirs classics and José Giovanni (who plays a small part here and would become himself a director in 1967 with " La Loi Du Survivant"),Deray shows his influences and brings them all back home:
Take the very long scene on a train :Jean-Pierre Melville could have filmed it but Deray pulls it off masterfully .Besides, the scene is entirely silent ,with stunning shots of a train belting though the night. When the traitor kills one of his accomplices,faces remain cold, impassive , with just a little amazement (Auclair))
In several respects ,it's Lacombe /Clouzot 's "Le Dernier Des Six" (1939) transferred to the harsher black and white world of the sixties with a crucial difference :we know from the start who is doing away with his so-called friends.
There's elements taken from the pure detective story : the way Vanel discovers the truth is par excellence the classic trick :the culprit 's words give him away.
The Americans,who are bankers and thus cannot be fooled by forged dollars provide the movie with a welcome comic relief.For the movie has the perfection of the mechanism of the clock ;it's all linked together with virtuosity ,and one thinks that the criminal will get away with it,weren't it for an unexpected deus ex machina,down to the wire.
Michel Magne's score ,very tuneful,contrats with the blackness of the atmosphere ;Prodis productions would use him again the next year in "Angélique Marquise Des Anges" in which Rochefort and Michèle Mercier would meet again :a marchioness and her broke lawyer ,which seems almost ironical when you know the ending of "Symphonie" .
A thriller you should put on your must-see list ;I take the advantage of this short review to recommend Deray's overlooked,unsung next-to-last effort ,"Un Crime" (1993): an in camera drama ,with only two actors :a jaded Delon who does not hog the stage and Manuel Blanc who matches him all along the way in this gruesome story.
Take the very long scene on a train :Jean-Pierre Melville could have filmed it but Deray pulls it off masterfully .Besides, the scene is entirely silent ,with stunning shots of a train belting though the night. When the traitor kills one of his accomplices,faces remain cold, impassive , with just a little amazement (Auclair))
In several respects ,it's Lacombe /Clouzot 's "Le Dernier Des Six" (1939) transferred to the harsher black and white world of the sixties with a crucial difference :we know from the start who is doing away with his so-called friends.
There's elements taken from the pure detective story : the way Vanel discovers the truth is par excellence the classic trick :the culprit 's words give him away.
The Americans,who are bankers and thus cannot be fooled by forged dollars provide the movie with a welcome comic relief.For the movie has the perfection of the mechanism of the clock ;it's all linked together with virtuosity ,and one thinks that the criminal will get away with it,weren't it for an unexpected deus ex machina,down to the wire.
Michel Magne's score ,very tuneful,contrats with the blackness of the atmosphere ;Prodis productions would use him again the next year in "Angélique Marquise Des Anges" in which Rochefort and Michèle Mercier would meet again :a marchioness and her broke lawyer ,which seems almost ironical when you know the ending of "Symphonie" .
A thriller you should put on your must-see list ;I take the advantage of this short review to recommend Deray's overlooked,unsung next-to-last effort ,"Un Crime" (1993): an in camera drama ,with only two actors :a jaded Delon who does not hog the stage and Manuel Blanc who matches him all along the way in this gruesome story.