Alain Resnais's return to filmmaking after a six-year absence counts as a disappointment only in relation to the director's previous feats and in view of the anxious wait for it. Somehow, it is less cunning than his best work. Jorge Semprun's screenplay about the decline and fall of Stavisky's ill-gotten, vaporous financial empire -- the storyline is what, in Hollywood parlance, might be called a "caper" picture -- examines the subject not for the intrigue in it, but for the mood of impending disaster, of certain decay, of living on sheer bluff. It's a shimmering, deceiving image of Thirties high life (jewels, ermine, art deco, Rolls Royces), undercut by a cancerous discontent. "When I think of this sad story," a character reflects at the finish, "it's as if everyone wore masks." Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anny Duperey, Charles Boyer. (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
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