Double Agents (film)

Last updated
Double Agents
Double Agents (film).jpg
Directed by Robert Hossein
Screenplay byRobert Hossein
Louis Martin
Alain Poiré
Produced byAlain Poiré
Starring Marina Vlady
Robert Hossein
CinematographyJacques Robin
Edited byGilbert Natot
Music by André Hossein
Release date
  • 1959 (1959)
LanguageFrench

Double Agents (French : La nuit des espions, Italian : La notte delle spie), also known as Night Encounter, is a 1959 mystery film co-written and directed by Robert Hossein.

Contents

A French-Italian co-production, it is based on the novel La Nuit des espions by Robert Chazal. It entered the main competition at the 20th edition of the Venice Film Festival. [1]

Plot

Cast

Reception

Michèle Manceaux  [ fr ] from L'Express described the film as "a Pirandellian idea [...] tinged with existentialism, and all drowned in an incredibly naive pathos, full of the [naive] humanism of a first communicant, with a lyricism that borders on bad taste". [2]

Jean-Louis Tallenay from Signes Du Temps wrote: "two fascinating faces, an original subject, a skillfully created atmosphere. But a confusion of ideas, an uncertainty in the direction of the actors and an affectation in the framing explain the rather cold reception given to the film". [1]

Bianco e Nero's film critic Giulio Cesare Castello  [ it ] wrote: "On one hand, it seems like a story in the style of Hitchcock, poised between emotion and deception; yet it lacks Hitchcock's skill in construction and his talent for thematic variations. On the other hand, one gets the impression that Hossein aimed much higher — for an "absolute", passionate love story set under exceptional circumstances", noting that "Hossein would certainly have liked to create his own Hiroshima mon amour . But [...] the "necessity" of inspiration — the purity of the poetic condition — is entirely absent here". [3]

References

  1. 1 2 Tallenay, Jean-Louis (October 1959). "Les films français déçoivent". Signes Du Temps. No. 10. p. 39. Retrieved 12 October 2025.
  2. Manceaux, Michèle (17 September 1959). "La Semaine". L'Express (in French). No. 431. p. 38. Retrieved 12 October 2025.
  3. Castello, Giulio Cesare (November 1959). "La nuit des espions di Robert Hossein". Bianco e Nero . No. 11. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 12 October 2025.