The Spies

The owner of a small, nearly empty psychiatric clinic is offered money to hide a man for a few days and tell nobody. The moment he agrees, the clinic fills with agents; everyone is watching everyone, and which of them is on which side stops being clear. The film is not interested in espionage plotting. It is interested in the comedy of paranoia: the doctor cannot work out who is real, the audience cannot either, and the film pushes that to the level of absurdity on purpose. What comes out is a structure that mocks the spy genre itself. The form is confined, claustrophobic and uncanny. Clouzot's suspense manner slides here towards the surreal. The source is a novel by the Czech writer Egon Hostovský. Its luck was bad. Arriving after the success of Les Diaboliques, it was built on a misunderstanding with both critics and audiences: people who came for a classic spy picture were disappointed, it failed commercially in France, and it never got a theatrical release in the United States. Curd Jürgens, Peter Ustinov and O. E. Hasse star, with Véra Clouzot in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who want to step outside Clouzot's better-known films and who enjoy absurdist suspense. Who it is not for: anyone after a clear plot. The film is deliberately untidy and leaves plenty unanswered.