To Skin a Spy (1966)

Touches You

A different way of telling a story

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Avec La Peau Des Autres/With the lives of others is an excellent spy thriller directed by Jacques Deray. He is considered an undisputed master of french thriller films. In many ways, there are very few directors in Anglophone cinema who can match the diversity and range of his films. For this film Jacques Deray chose Austrian capital Vienna as its setting. Much of the film concentrates its action to determine whether the head of a local Austrian network is a double agent or not ? This gives rise to a series of attacks, counter attacks, traps and wrong tracks whose sole purpose is to mislead the head of French information service. Everything appears to work well as all the leading characters are shown to speak French language but cultural differences do make their presence felt in many scenes. This can be deemed as a major handicap by certain viewers to fully comprehend the film's "raison d'être". This film boasts of a fine performance by French actor Lino Ventura as he plays his role with utmost care that nobody seems to stop him from carrying out his mission. Lastly, a film for those who state that Vienna has just music to show to the world.

The film is not in any way special considering the amount of espionage films in the wake of James Bond and "The spy who came in from the cold". It follows definitely more in the John Le Carré mold though. But it never reaches beyond and tries to establish Vienna once again as a meeting place for spies and data trading of any kind. The extensive use of Vienna's settings is amusing for locals since they are quite accurately done. And Lino Ventura as a French agent is never wrong but what is somehow strange is the total lack of any Austrian actors, all roles of Austrians went to German actors. If you want to know how Vienna looked in the sixties this is a good reference.

Even if spy thrillers (which, naturally, proliferated during the Cold War) are favorites of mine, sometimes I find it hard to follow the films' convoluted plots -which, more often than not, end up not being all that interesting or even the central focus of the films themselves! However, I must say that this particular example takes the cake: never during the course of the 90-plus minutes of the film is it made at all clear just which side the various characters are on and what kind of information they're peddling! In spite of this, the film is rendered watchable by the typically gloomy East European settings, its constant double-crosses and moments of violence and, above all, its weathered gallery of performers - Lino Ventura, Jean Servais, Wolfgang Preiss, Jean Bouise and Rene' Koldehoff (the cast also includes Adrian Hoven and Marilu' Tolo, who's wasted as the only female in the group).

Although the screenplay was written by Jose Giovanni ,it was not representative of his work:his world was the world of romantic gangsters,cops,raiders or losers(often played by Lino Ventura or Alain Delon).He had often denounced death penalty long before it was abolished in his country.This is to my knowledge Giovanni's only attempt at a spy thriller.It's a routine work,but generally the plot is decipherable,which is not always the case with double agents stories.Effective directing by Jacques Deray who would have his hour of glory with Alain Delon ("la piscine" "Borsalino").Lino Ventura does a good job.