The film version of Sebastien Japrisot's novel, "The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun" (one of my very favorite novels) is an excellent filming, wonderfully realized by the great director, Anatole Litvak (his last film). I could not imagine that the film would do the novel justice, but it is very faithful, and honestly, I did not think the novel was particularly film-able as Japrisot's books speak very cinematically but are more so ultimately cerebral. The visualization gets edited to pieces with plot mechanics, in this case, the screenplay as written by Richard Harris and Eleanor Perry sums up some of mystery of the storyline with a large piece of edited flashbacks, and even then, when the plot is neatly defused, the beauty of the thing requires multiple viewings to tie still more loose ends in one's mind. A review on the Turner site, titled his review "A Samantha Eggar Fizzle." If Samantha Eggar were wrong for "The Collector" as John Fowles and Terence Stamp suggested during the making of it, and one were to not consider her performance in "The Walking Stick" as indeed very good, then one should see her performance as Dany Lang here as "magnificent," a role she brings the character's fluid beauty and resilient vibrancy to realization as the excitement she brought to audiences with "The Collector" (earning her an AAN and the Cannes BA Award) is brought to this film, even though audiences were not especially looking. Roles like "Walk Don't Run" and "Doctor Doolittle" had not done her career much good. Also very good was John McEnery as "Phillip" (who in my mind was not my choice for the role, but he is anyway very good and fitting as was Bernard Fresson (from Polanksi's "The Tenant") as one of the truckers (he looks very like the part with his cohort, "Toothpaste Smile" from the book). The 16mm print I saw was faded with the Eastmancolor not holding up well, and Michel Legrand's soundtrack is one of his best and most unusual. The pairing of Ms. Eggar with Oliver Reed years later in "The Brood" is not because of their chemistry here. But I think Columbia would be so heroic to put this out as one of their Screen Classics.
