This absurdist satire of a world gone mad is a creepy delight.
SPOILER ALERT! The final scene is a real chiller, with the asylum keeper suddenly realising that, in an utterly insane world, the sane man is regarded as mad - and indeed is so, to all intents and purposes.
Like Kubrick's later 'Dr. Strangelove' the terrors of the H bomb are effectively used to create an uneasy comedy that finally lurches into horror, as the increasingly eccentric pursuit of the secret of the 'H3' super-weapon spins out of control, distorting reality itself in the process.
The twitterings of the Ocarina Players' Convention, the storm of feathers bursting (as it were) out of the frustration of a mute female patient, a mystery man called 'Vogel' (bird), and the harsh squawking of the insistent and threatening telephone: All these are memorable elements in a film as darkly humorous as anything by Hitchcock.
Curiously, I was often reminded of the quiet lunacy which threatens to engulf the two main characters in Alan Plater's TV trilogy, that begins with 'The Beiderbecke Affair'! Both film and TV series no doubt owe much to the inheritance of Kafka, showing as they each do the spectacle of people struggling to make sense out of their irrational and arbitrary fates.
The lack of any innovation in the cinematic technique of 'Les Espions' should not blind us to Clouzot's masterly creation, therein, of a world of ultimately inescapable horror.
This is a great film, and one to be viewed repeatedly.
SPOILER ALERT! The final scene is a real chiller, with the asylum keeper suddenly realising that, in an utterly insane world, the sane man is regarded as mad - and indeed is so, to all intents and purposes.
Like Kubrick's later 'Dr. Strangelove' the terrors of the H bomb are effectively used to create an uneasy comedy that finally lurches into horror, as the increasingly eccentric pursuit of the secret of the 'H3' super-weapon spins out of control, distorting reality itself in the process.
The twitterings of the Ocarina Players' Convention, the storm of feathers bursting (as it were) out of the frustration of a mute female patient, a mystery man called 'Vogel' (bird), and the harsh squawking of the insistent and threatening telephone: All these are memorable elements in a film as darkly humorous as anything by Hitchcock.
Curiously, I was often reminded of the quiet lunacy which threatens to engulf the two main characters in Alan Plater's TV trilogy, that begins with 'The Beiderbecke Affair'! Both film and TV series no doubt owe much to the inheritance of Kafka, showing as they each do the spectacle of people struggling to make sense out of their irrational and arbitrary fates.
The lack of any innovation in the cinematic technique of 'Les Espions' should not blind us to Clouzot's masterly creation, therein, of a world of ultimately inescapable horror.
This is a great film, and one to be viewed repeatedly.