BY TODD GARBARINI
Although
Yves Boisset’s 1972 French political thriller The French Conspiracy
boasts an international cast of heavyweight actors, the film moves at a snail’s
pace and is chock full of schematic dialog and little in the way of the suspense
promised in the ads. The film opened on Wednesday, November 14, 1973 at the
long-gone 68th Street Playhouse and The Eastside Cinema, both in
Manhattan, and on Tuesday, December 25, 1973 at the ABC Century City Theatre 2
in Los Angeles. My guess is that this film, originally titled L’Attentat
which translates to The Assassination in English, was so named in the
hopes of capitalizing on the success of Constantin Costa-Gavras’s Z
(1969 and winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and also nominated
for Best Picture) and William Friedkin’s highly lauded The French Connection
(1971 and winner of the Oscar for Best Picture). In contrast, both of those
films were riveting and shot in a documentary style. The French Conspiracy
has so many characters and so much exposition that one can only wonder what
film Judith Crist saw when she proclaimed it as “one of the best post ‘Z’
political thrillers to come our way†in her New York Magazine review of the
film. The convoluted plot, penned by screenwriter Jorge Semprún of Z and
L’Aveu/The Confession (1970, also directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras)
fame, is based upon the true-life events of the October 29, 1965
“disappearance†of Moroccan left-wing politician Mehdi Ben Barka who, as
finally explained in a 2018 book, was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence
operatives and killed by Moroccan agents and French police. Pretty awful!
In
the film, Sadiel (Gian Maria Volontè of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For
a Few Dollars More (1965) fame) is a Geneva-exiled Organisation Armée
Secrète (OAS) terrorist originally from Algeria who is returning to France.
This fact grabs the attention of the French Secret Service, the Central
Intelligence Agency, and a dictator named Kassar (Michel Piccoli from Jean-Luc Godard’s
Le mépris/Contempt (1963) who also wants Saidel dead. François Darien
(Jean-Louis Trintignant from the aforementioned Z and Bernardo
Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) is a French journalist, allegedly an
informer during the Algerian War, who has been blackmailed by these two
organizations into luring Saidel back to Paris under the guise of being given
the chance to speak openly on television. The actual goal concerns Saidel being
assassinated, a plan that Darien learns of early on. He tries to avoid the
assassins and blow the whistle publicly. Another journalist, Michael Howard
(Roy Schieder of The French Connection), learns of the double-cross, too,
but is warned by the CIA not to interfere – though he may even be a member
of the CIA. In films like this, no one is to be trusted. The CIA does
their best to tie up any loose ends by the film’s conclusion but by that point,
we are just grateful that the film has finally come to an end.
The
French Conspiracy is
not a terrible film, it’s just not a particularly good film either, which is a
shame considering the presence of Jean Seberg (Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de
Souffle/Breathless, 1960), Bruno Cremer (William Friedkin’s Sorcerer,
1977), and Phillipe Noiret (Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, 1988),
in addition to the main cast who have all appeared in films that I have loved
over the past few decades. Composer Ennio Morricone, who was also scoring Dario
Argento’s first three films at this time, does what he can to lift the action,
however there isn’t much of it to be lifted. Ninety-four minutes into it there
is a foot chase that fizzles out, which is a shame as by this point the
audience is pleading for the men to do anything except sit, stand, walk around,
and talk.
The
film is now available on Blu-ray courtesy of Code Red and released by Kino
Lorber and the transfers are beautiful. I say transfers, plural, as there are
two separate versions of the film on the dual-layered Blu-ray. There is an
English dubbed cut that runs 98 minutes in length and a longer French-spoken
with English subtitles version that runs 123 minutes. The film is a lot to take
in, especially with the additional 25 minutes. The 123-minute cut with
subtitles is the version that played here in the States theatrically, so
perhaps the 98-minute cut played in Great Britain, or on television? The longer
cut features Roy Schieder in a total of four scenes whereas the shorter version
features him in only two.
Unfortunately,
there are no extras on the disc, except for a trailers section consisting of The
Hunter Will Get You (1976), And Hope to Die (1972), Max and the
Junkmen (1971), Last Embrace (1978), Caravan to Vaccares
(1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), The Tamarind Seed (1974), OSS
117: Mission for a Killer (1965), The Violent Professionals (1973)
and Puppet on a Chain (1970). I would have loved a film historian’s
commentary to explain the movie’s conception and behind-the-scenes tidbits, but
perhaps there just wasn’t enough time to include it. If you’re somehow a fan of
this film, this Blu-ray is a definite purchase.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON