Le Jeu de la vérité (1961) - film review

One evening, a group of society friends gather to attend a party.  Their host suggests they play a game of confessions, in which each guest reveals some unknown truths about him or herself.  In the course of the increasingly heated verbal exchanges, a man is murdered after having tried to blackmail his fellow guests.  A police inspector appears unexpectedly on the doorstep and immediately takes charge of the situation.  The game of truth has only just begun…

This unusual French whodunit was directed by Robert Hossein, who, despite having made over a dozen films, is better known as an actor (famously starring opposite Michèle Mercier in the cult Angélique films of the 1960s).  Whilst the film is seductively stylish and strangely redolent of some of the early films of the French New Wave, its languorous pace, overly theatrical dialogue and static photography make it a somewhat luke-warm, lumbering affair, not the slick sophisticated piece that it deserves to be.  The absurdity of the plot does give the film an odd, almost surreal edge, although the anti-Bourgeois messages that come across are hardly original.  What the film does offer is some compelling performances from some of French cinema’s finest actors – notably Jean Servais, Paul Meurisse and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

© James Travers 2005

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