Before I start my review I must point out that the version of the film I saw was quite poor, which may have coloured my overall impression. But anyway, here goes:
'Blind Date', or 'Chance Meeting', as this is also called, is one of Joseph Losey's first British films, some few years before major arthouse success began with 'The Servant'.
The film has a very upbeat and touristy, whimsical intro, with Hardy Kruger as boyish Dutch artist Jan hopping off a Routemaster by the Thames and buying flowers in Westminster Square, with, yes, the Houses of Parliament in the background. All this is of course setting us up for what is to come when he arrives at the Mews flat where he is expecting to meet the lady with whom he is having an affair.
Suddenly the police arrive, first uniforms and then plain clothes, who prevent him from leaving, and the scene turns into something reminiscent of Joseph K's predicament when he is arrested and interrogated without being informed of what he is accused of. This Kafkaesque scenario is protracted for some time and you get the distinct feeling that this is a film based on a stage play. Even the flashbacks showing Jan's claimed meetings (at art-dealer's, Tate Gallery and Jan's painting studio) with a sophisticated, and married, French lady, have a staged feeling to them. At last we, and Jan, get to see that there is a murdered woman in the flat, although her face is not shown and Jan assumes that the body belongs to the French lady whom he was expecting to meet.
In contrast to other reviewers I must say that Hardy Kruger's acting is annoying in this film. He does his version of the broody but earnest young artist. There is a lot of posing and gesturing and falling about - histrionics which Losey ought to have reined in.
Stanley Baker is competent but not brilliant as the brusque inspector who inexplicably drinks milk throughout the movie. (The first time, he actually helps himself to milk from the murdered girl's fridge!) It's funny to see in these old films how the police run riot all over the crime scene, picking up objects without gloves and generally contaminating everything.
Micheline Presle, with her beautiful eyes, is rather good in the part of the sophisticated French lady married to the English lord. The inspector works hard to unravel the truth, even though under pressure from his posh chief to not let the lord, who is also an important diplomat, be implicated in any way, even to the point of suggesting that the inspector offer Jan a manslaughter charge and reduced sentence if he confesses, instead of proven homicide if he doesn't. Jan however maintains his innocence and the inspector drives him to London Airport in order to observe the reactions of the arriving lord. And now we see that the lady is still alive. (The body in the Mews flat was really the lord's kept woman.)
In the end the inspector engineers a confrontation with the French lady, who (incredibly) can not keep up her mask of not knowing Jan and he is satisfied that Jan is innocent and releases him. Not that we care too much, as Hardy Kruger is so irritating that I certainly wouldn't have shed much of a tear if he had been condemned!
Worth seeing, if only for Baker and Presle, and for the views of a bygone London. One shot shows the skyline all the way along the riverside from Westminster to the City. Not a skyscraper in sight. In fact you can actually see the dome of Saint Paul's. (This film was made about seven years before the Post Office Tower was built which was for a while the tallest building in Europe.) I doubt if you can see Saint Paul's today amid the infestation of skyscrapers that now clog the City.
The film has a very upbeat and touristy, whimsical intro, with Hardy Kruger as boyish Dutch artist Jan hopping off a Routemaster by the Thames and buying flowers in Westminster Square, with, yes, the Houses of Parliament in the background. All this is of course setting us up for what is to come when he arrives at the Mews flat where he is expecting to meet the lady with whom he is having an affair.
Suddenly the police arrive, first uniforms and then plain clothes, who prevent him from leaving, and the scene turns into something reminiscent of Joseph K's predicament when he is arrested and interrogated without being informed of what he is accused of. This Kafkaesque scenario is protracted for some time and you get the distinct feeling that this is a film based on a stage play. Even the flashbacks showing Jan's claimed meetings (at art-dealer's, Tate Gallery and Jan's painting studio) with a sophisticated, and married, French lady, have a staged feeling to them. At last we, and Jan, get to see that there is a murdered woman in the flat, although her face is not shown and Jan assumes that the body belongs to the French lady whom he was expecting to meet.
In contrast to other reviewers I must say that Hardy Kruger's acting is annoying in this film. He does his version of the broody but earnest young artist. There is a lot of posing and gesturing and falling about - histrionics which Losey ought to have reined in.
Stanley Baker is competent but not brilliant as the brusque inspector who inexplicably drinks milk throughout the movie. (The first time, he actually helps himself to milk from the murdered girl's fridge!) It's funny to see in these old films how the police run riot all over the crime scene, picking up objects without gloves and generally contaminating everything.
Micheline Presle, with her beautiful eyes, is rather good in the part of the sophisticated French lady married to the English lord. The inspector works hard to unravel the truth, even though under pressure from his posh chief to not let the lord, who is also an important diplomat, be implicated in any way, even to the point of suggesting that the inspector offer Jan a manslaughter charge and reduced sentence if he confesses, instead of proven homicide if he doesn't. Jan however maintains his innocence and the inspector drives him to London Airport in order to observe the reactions of the arriving lord. And now we see that the lady is still alive. (The body in the Mews flat was really the lord's kept woman.)
In the end the inspector engineers a confrontation with the French lady, who (incredibly) can not keep up her mask of not knowing Jan and he is satisfied that Jan is innocent and releases him. Not that we care too much, as Hardy Kruger is so irritating that I certainly wouldn't have shed much of a tear if he had been condemned!
Worth seeing, if only for Baker and Presle, and for the views of a bygone London. One shot shows the skyline all the way along the riverside from Westminster to the City. Not a skyscraper in sight. In fact you can actually see the dome of Saint Paul's. (This film was made about seven years before the Post Office Tower was built which was for a while the tallest building in Europe.) I doubt if you can see Saint Paul's today amid the infestation of skyscrapers that now clog the City.