Louis Malle’s first narrative film was also the first in a series of miraculously confident directing debuts that surfaced in French cinema in the late ‘50s. (New Wave? More like a New Tsunami.) Working from a rather pulpy source (it’s Malle's only genre pic), it features a typical noir set up, a la James Cain, about a young wife & her lover who almost get away with a perfect murder. The film was also Jeanne Moreau’s international breakthrough pic (those nighttime walks underscored by Miles Davis’s daringly improvised jazz score did the trick). But then, the film features a whole cache of beautifully etched perfs. Malle said that he tried to graft a Bresson-like sensibility onto a Hitchcockian style & form . . . and damned if he didn’t. But the film's unsung hero is certainly lenser Henri Decae, with his strikingly mobile camera and daring use of natural light (even at night). The picture is no classic for the ages, & it didn't start of the New Wave (Malle remained an outsider), but it's tasty enough on its limited terms.
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