Among Losey's more openly political works is his sober and gripping reenactment of Leon Trotsky's murder in Mexico City on August 20, 1940 by an agent of Stalin. Often read as a partial apology for his previously held Stalinist sympathies, The Assassination also returns to the theme of the intruder central to Losey's cinema and the dark implication that an intruder, like a vampire, must always somehow be invited in. Alain Delon's sangfroid portrait of Trotsky's killer projects both the nefariousness and innocence that are templates for intruders throughout Losey's cinema – although Delon's icy killer remains focused on every detail of his mission, he is also bewildered by the violence of the task assigned him.