Review of Ten Days Wonder

You would think that a movie with this pedigree - Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Michel Piccoli in the cast, Claude Chabrol as director, filmed in English on French locations - would be, if not an art-house success, then at least a cult item. And yet "Ten Days Wonder" has been mostly forgotten today. It's not a great movie, but it's worth seeing. Chabrol gets quite a few chances to demonstrate his virtuosity with the camera, as he lets it glide and follow the characters, sometimes switching from present to past. Perkins and Welles are perfectly cast, and Marlène Jobert is sexy, but Piccoli seems slightly uncomfortable with the English language. However, the biggest problem of "Ten Days Wonder" is the sluggish pacing, which makes the 105-minute running time feel even longer (for example, was the scene with Welles' old mother really necessary?). Given the limited number of characters, some of the twists (the blackmailer....) can be guessed beforehand, but others can still shock you. The final 20 minutes mark this as a very dark and bleak movie. **1/2 out of 4.