Eva

"Eva" is based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, the British writer of American "tough-guy" novels. Director Joseph Losey overlays a cryptic story of alienation and obsession, and the beautiful photography makes the life of the film seem simultaneously glamorous and lonely.

But inside this modish story of a not-very-admirable man and the evil woman he falls in love with is a rollicking old noir screaming to be let out, with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer as the femme fatale.

Contemporary Hollywood-style, one-thought-at-a-time storytelling is conspicuously absent here. The audience has to work to connect the dots in this film - there's no directorial hand on the back of your neck, turning your head to look at this road sign, then that, then the other. A requirement of active audience effort was once taken for granted, but is now much more rare and may be an unfamiliar experience for some viewers.

Jeanne Moreau is compulsively watchable (as always) as a woman who thinks, but we rarely know about what. The improbably handsome Stanley Baker has the time of his life acting for once, rather than punching someone's chin every twelve minutes, as in most of his films. Virna Lisi has dignity and consequence as the good girl whose love is never valued enough.

The underlying story of the film is a classic fantasy of male self-justification - man chases the wrong woman, one who treats all men badly because she can. The man lets himself be led around by his privates, he thinks with the wrong part of his body, and then he blames the hash he makes of things on the "evil" woman (see Adam's explanation to God in the Garden of Eden story). Another predessor of the film is Hogarth's The Rake's Progress.

Who the other characters are and what their motivations might be are minor questions - they are peripheral figures who only serve to focus the film on the central issues of male weakness and female inscrutability. The eternal question, "What do women want?", is enough to destroy the unstable male protagonist, and we watch him unravel in the beautifully photographed surroundings of Venice and Rome. The admirable letterbox transfer looks particularly seductive on a big-screen TV.

If you ever wondered what a film might look like that combined "The Blue Angel," "L'Avventura" and "Out of the Past," this is about as close as you'll get. Recommended to all except the most passive viewers.

This film is very close, faithful to the James Hadley Chase's novel. Actually Chase gave with this book the quintessence of his whole world, whole atmosphere, among the more than one hundred books he wrote - the femme fatale, as we found in nearly each of his novels. But here you have NO criminal elements, ONLY the femme fatale line, no gangsters nor killers and blackmailers, no psychopaths either. This story is filtered, purified of allthe other ingredients that I just mentioned above.

So, back to this movie, the female character is absolutely perfect for a complex and so deep minded actress as Jeanne Moreau was all long her career. The thousand faces actress for me. The eternal search for her true identity woman on screen. Not because I am French. But she is absolutely awesome here. Back to James Hadley Chase, there were two main elements in his work. Femme Fatales and GREED, GREED, GREED. Here you have only the woman aspect. Women who ALWAYS drive men to their own doom.

Although the brothers Hakim have been made the scapegoats for their drastic cutting of Joseph Losey's film, the longueurs in the shortened version indicate that the original length of 155 minutes would have been even more tiresome. To suggest that some have done that this pretentious opus is a mutilated masterpiece requires a real stretch of the imagination.

It is customary for film historians and assorted academics to describe Losey's style here as 'baroque' which for this viewer at any rate signifies arty-farty and devoid of either structure or linear narrative. Losey had originally envisaged a score by Miles Davis which had worked so well for Louis Malle in 'L'Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud', together with some recordings of the ultimate torch singer Billie Holiday. In the event a couple of her recordings remain and we are instead cursed with an extremely irritating and intrusive score by Michel Legrand. We can at least be grateful to have cinematographers Henri Decae and Gianni di Venanzo whose images are splendid.

In a role originally earmarked for Richard Burton, fellow Welshman Stanley Baker is alas totally miscast whilst the talented but inadequately dubbed Virna Lisi is utterly wasted. It must have been quite a coup for Losey to have acquired the services of Jeanne Moreau as the title character and this exemplary artiste certainly delivers the goods as a praying mantis.

For directors seeking international recognition Italy in the early 1960's was the place to be but Losey's misguided and misjudged attempt to do an Antonioni must be accounted a failure.

Two distinctly dislike-able characters circle one another amid the nicely photographed Venice and Rome locations; unable to break away, unable to be together it seems, but wrecking the lives of those around them. It's a promising scenario, a glamorous setting, a combination of strong cast, top name director and highly rated cinematographer. One could easily imagine Antonioni at the helm with Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni as the stars. But it's not them and it really doesn't work. In the male lead role Stanley Baker is well cast as an out-of-place writer from the Welsh Valleys who's made it big with one book and now lives on an Island near Venice, the new darling of the in-crowd. He's big, bluff and rugged with undeniable presence and a convincing aura of potential violence. He isn't exactly nice to know, but you get the feeling that the right woman could bring him round. Virna Lisi as his fiancée is that woman. A Beautiful, fragile, extremely desirable character, she clearly loves him despite being well aware of his many flaws. So what on earth Baker's character finds in love-rival Eva is the huge stumbling over which this whole movie falls. Disbelief can only be suspended to a degree. Eva isn't the sort of woman to bring out the best in anyone. She's clearly supposed to be some kind of irresistible sexual predator who the ex coal miner cannot resist but she's portrayed as frankly repellent. A pouting, scornful, self obsessed gold-digger who plays off lovers against pretend-husbands. She treats Baker's character with taunting disdain at every turn and yet he follows her like an eager lap-dog. Her character might, just might, have worked if an actress of spectacular sexual allure had been cast. Instead Eva is played by Jeanne Moreau. She's a fine actress but she has nothing of the Machiavellian Femme Fatale that the role absolutely demands. Take a look at the poster/DVD sleeve photo of her with cigarette dangling from a sour, down-turned mouth. It's clear this is an actress who's screen persona is more Bette Davis than Brigit Bardot - more Rachael Roberts than Julie Christie. She plays the role with conviction but cannot communicate the essential level of sex-appeal to make the story work, even when the demure camera work teases us with extended near- views of her undressing(this is an early 60s film, so explicit it's never going to be, a lot of wardrobe doors and bath taps are strategically positioned) it all just looks more sordid than sexy. It's just not her role and no amount of beautifully filmed scenes of a wintry Venice, or glamorous parties, or stylised interiors or Alfa Romeo sports cars can overcome that. There is also some poor direction of the actors - of Baker in particular, who gets a bit too over- Shakespearian in his emoting at times (early on - the hand clawing at the face...no Stan, you were better than that, much better) and a few scenes which are simply too set-up to be plausible.In the end its not a film that holds the attention, the characters are too unsympathetic to feel any connection with and although there are moments of poetry , as a whole it's a plodding misfire. My apologies to all fans of Miss Moreau - no offence, very few actresses could have made this role work.

Filmed in noir et blanc this is more noir than blanc. `Film gris' might be a better category. Venice in the winter with stormy waters, in more ways than one, provides the backdrop to this tale of two strong characters, Eve (Moreau) and Tyvian Jones (Baker). Neither character deserves, or gets, a shred of sympathy from us, she being a ruthless gold digger and the personification of evil, he a womanising writer who takes plagiarism to new heights (or depths).

Despite this, the powerful interaction between them draws us in to their world as their doomed relationship develops. This development is far from straightforward, as one would expect with Losey directing a French/Italian production. Both main characters appear deaf to each other's needs or demands. The film starts more or less where it finishes but we do not get taken around a clear circle, rather we fly off at irregular tangents. Whilst not making for easy viewing it does, nevertheless, hold our attention.

Moreau is central and dominates every scene in which she appears. In truth when she's not on screen the film falls rather flat. I'm not convinced that casting Baker, whose expertise lay in hard man roles either military (`Zulu') or criminal (`Robbery'), was right. He just about got away with it as a university don in Losey's later film `Accident', but as a writer moving in artistic circles this may be a stretch too far. If a freebooting Welsh Lothario (in Dylan Thomas mode) was required just think what Richard Burton might have made of it!

Watch out for a brief, but wonderful performance by James Villiers as a lugubrious, plummy screenplay writer.

This is not a film for recalling the `funny bits' but I defy British viewers not to enjoy Moreau's last words in the whole film - `Bloody Welshman'. Not a term unheard in English, Scottish or Irish rugby circles – but coming from Jeanne Moreau? Hilarious and wonderful.

The film is probably about 15 minutes too long – some of the scenes between the two main characters have elements of repetition and add little to the overall development. An interesting, if flawed, movie.