First I must pay homage to a fine actor, Claude Giraud, who is no longer with us. It is a sadness too for the cinema that he did not make enough films, especially of this quality. When this film came out in France 60 years ago it went against the modish fashions of the times, but unlike so many of those films it does not show a single wrinkle. Perhaps it is because it was a costume drama set in the 19th C, and this made it timeless, but personally I do not think so. Like all films like this with such magical ambiguity it cannot be explained. Giraud is a detective in uniform; a young man who is seemingly lost in the cold wintry landscape of a remote region in France. He is looking for a murderer and unexpectedly finds a truth about himself that he is unable to bear. The thread of a haunting song by Jacques Brel about why men are bored is as melancholy as the snowy region of relentless whiteness that appears to have no end. It accentuates the boredom that makes men murder without a hint of physical sexual desire, but solely motivated by the act of murder itself. Boredom is the thrill of human annihilation. Perhaps this is more relevant today than it was back then in the more optimistic nineteen-sixties. No spoilers, but a plea for this film to be rediscovered and to my knowledge it has never been shown in the UK, or the USA. A shame on us for preferring the fashionable to the essential.