The Secret (1974)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Fabulous little film involving just three main characters all of whom do very well but Jean Louis Trintignant and Philippe Noiret excel. Great start, great finish and all along the way this curious film has the main protagonists and us guessing. Only Trintignant's character is really sure what is going on and we have seen him make an escape at the beginning but whether his interpretation of events is accurate is always uncertain. As well as this there is a curious relationship between the man and wife Trintignant befriends. Is he offering his wife to him, daring her, testing her?At times quite chilling, always challenging and intriguing and if this slips or pauses for a second there is the fantastic Morricone score holding everything firmly in its grip. Sweet, menacing and assured, this has to one of the composer's very best. Great find!

Robert Enrico's 1974 "Le Secret" was obviously supposed to be one of those paranoid thrillers from the seventies and the marvel is at how simply it was done. In that sense you can say it was very well done. But to look at it more carefully, up against other more complex paranoid thrillers, the person who is "it"" must have a clearly, for our sake as the world/society will ultimately benefit without Intelligence making up our minds for us that an incredibly life changing "secret" can not be revealed and all who know it or possibly could stumbled upon its being able to shed light on our perspectives, other than what Intelligence wants us to be kept in the dark about, the person on the run should know where to take the secret for the best possible chances of it doing any good. In Robert Enrico's film, that avenue is not explored, and the film becomes a rather ordinary TV movie of the week with fine actors like Jean-Louis Trintignant as "David" (our agent); Marlene Jobert as "Julia" (the woman) (in a fine performance once again) and Phillip Noiret (as her husband "Thomas," friend of mankind and understanding and trusting of the agent as mankind should). Written by Robert Enrico (who previously directed the very fine "The Adventuriers" (1970)) with Pascal Jardin (dialogue) and from the novel "Le Compagnon Indesirable" by Francis Ryck, with Etienne Becker as director of photography and Ennio Morricone providing the score, the film is still rather devastating. In the day of the complex paranoid thriller, the simplicities of "Le Secret" are likely to be forgotten, and that, too, is sad.

The rude nature of the South West of France alongside the plot of the movie where three well known french actors give the best of themselves in a story that is taken of reality of those years of the 70's. Sublime shots and dialogues, good acting work, a movie that has no need to any Hollywood action and big budgets in order to entertain. If you like France and its mentality, then this movie is for you.

Under mysterious circumstances a strange guy (well played by Trintignant) escapes from some underground asylum. He finds refuge with a couple of fringe people of 68 who seemed to have retired to a tranquil life somwhere in the south of France. The strange visitor revives old dreams and memories and represents new opportunities to make something more out of life. The couple, superbly played by Philippe Noiret and Marlène Jobert, have each their own reasons to be interested and intrigued by the visitor. After a series of sometimes menacing, sometimes hylarious events, always impregnated with a subdued tension, the movie ends somewhere in the emptiness of some isolated beach.This is a very good movie. The images and the playing show a lot but also leave a lot to be guessed by the watcher. It makes a point (about Big Brother who is watching you) and is mysterious enough to remain full of tension.