A methodical police inspector becomes entangled in a web of deceit after a murder investigation reveals disturbing connections to his own department. As suspicion tightens around him, he must outwit both the killer and the system to survive.
Acting
Montand's dead-eyed precision—he barely blinks for two hours.
Direction
Corneau's clinical framing turns procedure into purgatory.
Score
Georges Delerue's jazz whispers doom between silences.
Director
Alain Corneau
Yves Montand
Inspecteur Marc Ferrot
François Périer
Commissaire Ganay
Simone Signoret
Thérèse Ganay
Stefania Sandrelli
Sylvia Leopardi
Vadim Glowna
L'inspecteur Abadie
Mathieu Carrière
L'inspecteur Ménard
Claude Bertrand
Le marchand de cochons
Gabrielle Doulcet
La vieille aux chats
Serge Marquand
Le rouquin
Roger Muni
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of the 1970s 'polar' revival that rejected American noir glamour for French bureaucratic despair.
Montand insisted on performing his own gun maintenance on camera; the weapon's ritual cleaning became the film's visual motif.
FR
