On the heels of a colorful parade of characters, Lazlo Kovacs bursts into the oppressive palace of Thérèse and Henri with irreverent rebellion and boisterous joie de vivre. Ushering in an inevitable changing of the guard in French society and cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character (whose name will reappear as his character’s alias in Godard’s Breathless) shakes up the bourgeois regime in Chabrol’s whirlwind murder mystery. Unwilling to compromise any longer, Henri jeopardizes his material wealth and social standing for the modern bohemian Leda. His miserably uptight wife will not go out without a fight and the crossfire that ensues is as absurdly Nouvelle Vague as it is Hollywood melodrama and gilded European classicism. – BG