Man Down

A short but dazzling and moving clip from Costa-Gavras’ seriously underrated second film, the wartime epic UN HOMME DE TROP, which will be the subject of Thursday’s edition of The Forgotten.

The movie, an action thriller, is in a way a kind of path not taken for Costa-Gavras. It underperformed and he followed it with Z, which diverts the thriller form into more obviously political directions, and this became the filmmaker’s metier, with the occasional odd diversion like the haunting CLAIR DE FEMME, which also deserves more attention.

This scene combines deliberately mismatched angles, stylised sound design and exponential zooms to create a feverish, haunting atmosphere.

I am honestly mystified why anyone would be interested in WHERE EAGLES DARE (Geoff Dyer has a whole book about it — what a loser!) when they could have this, which is MUCH more exciting and action-packed, but also includes sequences like the above.

Just kidding about Geoff Dyer,