The marriage of manner with content which worked well in Marienbad doesn't really work here. Perhaps the viewer is meant to identify, or at least, can identify, with Boyer's Baron, who repeatedly complains that he doesn't understand all these high finance complexities. I certainly had no idea what was going on, and it was extremely annoying not to have it better clarified. It was watchable, however, and I lasted through to the bitter end. Belmondo is always magnetic. Perhaps that was the message: con-men are always charismatic; and congenitally incomprehensible. Perhaps they are tantamount to mental cases, living in some unrealistic fantasy world of their own. I wonder if there is a film of Stavisky's great contemporary, and far greater superior in the field of deceptive high finance: Ivar Kreuger ? Both these characters were reported to have committed suicide, but were later said to have been murdered.
Review of Stavisky
