Un homme à abattre (1967)
Directed by Philippe Condroyer

Film Review

Un homme à abattre is an unusual blend of conventional film noir and political thriller, imbued with a chilling sense of cold war realism which sets it apart from most other thrillers of its time. The only diversion from the meticulously framed political drama, filmed in a near-documentary style, is a romantic subplot involving Jean-Louis Trintignant and Valérie Lagrange.  Trintignant is, as ever, magnificent, but this particular Un homme et une femme detour feels so out of place that it is almost surreal.

Whilst the film makes a pleasing change from the overly glamorised, glossy action thrillers of its day, it is weak on exposition, and we get to find out very little about the characters in the film, or their situation.  The director, Philippe Condroyer (the same Philippe Condroyer who gave us Tintin et les Oranges Bleues) seems to be far more preoccupied with the mechanics of espionage and with achieving a sense of gritty realism than in rewarding his audience with the kind of slick suspense thriller they are used to.  Un homme à abattre is an obvious forerunner of the hard-boiled political thrillers of the 1970s and is particularly reminiscent of the films of Costa-Gavras.

Film Synopsis

In the mid-1960s, a German architect named Fromm is under close surveillance by a suspicious group of individuals.  They track his every movement, watch his comings and goings, patiently waiting for the moment when they can make their move.  Fromm may look like a respectable engineer today, but twenty-five years ago he was Schmidt, a notorious Nazi officer at the Mauthausen concentration camp.  One member of the group watching the architect has a particular interest in him.  He is Julius, and it was his brother who died in the camp under Schmidt's orders.  Now that there can be no doubt as to the man's identity, Julius and his allies can proceed with their plan.  Schmidt will be lured to an abandoned old house on the pretext of a restoration job and then he will be executed - as coldly and methodically as he executed countless Jews during the war.  Unfortunately, Schmidt had been anticipating something of this kind, and he turns out to be far more dangerous and resourceful than Julius's private death squad had allowed for...