Losey made a bold gambit that his three hour version of Eva would become his most "important" work. Despite the removal of over one hour by its producers, Eva did, in fact, dramatically redefine Losey’s status as a director of European art films. At the heart of this surprisingly dark story of a bored and embittered author and his fatal tryst with a mod seductress are two riveting, careerdefining performances by Stanley Baker as a seedy, Welsh Hemingway figure and Jeanne Moreau as Eva – the cruelest of the many femmes fatales in Losey's cinema, and a fascinating epitome of frayed glamour. Something like an Antonionian film noir, Eva dispassionately observes a writer's total disintegration and defeat in the hands of a cold blooded temptress like a moth caught in a cat's deadly, idle game. With its crisply baroque camera work and mise-en-scène and a gorgeous score by nouvelle vague great Michel Legrand, Eva introduced a new note of eccentricity into Losey's work.