Un soir... par hasard (1963)
Directed by Ivan Govar

Film Review

After the failure of La Croix des vivants (1962), his most inspired film, Belgian director Ivan Govar would have been forgiven for giving up filmmaking altogether and instead opting for a saner profession where success isn't so dramatically decided by the whims and caprices of his clientele and a few opinionated snobs.  By now, with five films under his belt and popular recognition as elusive as ever, Govar was becoming inured to failure, so he carried on - and made three further flops before he finally chucked in the towel, at the ripe old age of thirty.  Obscurity came swiftly and today Govar is all but forgotten, his work appreciated only by a faithful band of followers who see the merit of his quaintly individualistic style of cinema.

All this is a shame because Govar, whilst hardly the most inspired of filmmakers, did bring a distinctive flair to his films, and this is apparent in the film he made directly after La Croix des vivants - Un soir, par hasard (a.k.a. Agent of Doom), a strange little thriller that looks like something the British film company Hammer or its rival Amicus may have knocked out around this time.  The film is adapted from Robert Collard's novel L'Aventure commencera ce soir and makes the most of its creepy, Nigel Kneale-like fusion of science-fiction and supernatural fantasy, which it manages to sustain brilliantly (however ludicrous the plot) through some stylish photography, camerawork and editing.  After setting up the film's absurd premise so masterfully, Govar allows the whole thing to come crashing down in the concluding thirty minutes and it all ends up (as it was perhaps bound to) as a ludicrously far-fetched spy thriller.

Up until the fatal one hour mark, Govar and his three principal actors do a magnificent job of hooking us and drawing us into their bizarre fantasy world, one that carries strange echoes of Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946).  Michel Le Royer is the attractive lead, a classic sixties babe magnet who is the only member of the cast not to appear completely unhinged.  The actor had a brief period of stardom playing flamboyant heroic parts - previously he had taken the lead in Jean Dréville's La Fayette (1962), later he would feature in two hugely successful French television shows of the period - Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (1963) and Corsaires et Flibustiers (1966).  Looking more like a scrummy centrefold from a woman's magazine than the ace nuclear physicist he is supposed to be playing, Le Royer makes a handsome playmate for the even more photogenic Annette Stroyberg, who had recently found fame by marrying Roger Vadim and taking on a suitably lurid part in his film Les Liaisons dangereuses (1960).  Govar certainly makes the most of his lead actors' blatant sex appeal, with a few tasteful digressions into arty eroticism that add to both the film's sensuous allure and its eerie lyricism.

Thankfully, Jean Servais and Pierre Brasseur are on hand to prevent the film from turning into a fully fledged blue movie, their creepy presence strengthening the grim aura that pervades the film.  Servais still hasn't progressed much beyond the noir heavy he played so successfully in Jules Dassin's Du rififi chez les hommes (1955), but his threatening, lugubrious persona makes his shady Piort a suitably ambiguous character and prevents us from guessing the truth too quickly.  Pierre Brasseur is just as adept at playing a double game, although his reputation for screen villainy precedes him and it's not so much of a surprise when his character's true nature is revealed to us.  It's a tribute to both the imaginative flair that Govar's brings to his direction and the spell-binding quality of the performances that we hardly notice that Un soir, par hasard is a fairly low-budget four-hander - at least not until the plot suddenly comes unravelled in its final act.  Govar made only two more films after this - Que personne ne sorte (1962) and Deux heures à tuer (1965) - two quirky thrillers that, whilst hardly original, make entertaining viewing.

Film Synopsis

At an important research centre in Saclay, just outside Paris, 20-year-old atomic physicist André Ségonne has made what could well be one of the scientific breakthroughs of the century when he creates a small quantity of anti-matter in his laboratory.  In the delirium of success, André sets off on his motorbike for a well-deserved holiday but skids off the road into a tree and loses consciousness.  When he comes to, he finds himself in a strange old mansion somewhere in the country, attended to by a mysterious older man, Piort, and his stunningly beautiful châtelaine, Florence.  Piort explains that in his accident André sustained a fatal brain fracture, but he was restored to life by the unexplained healing properties of the house.  Piort demonstrates this by bringing back to life a dead cat and adds that the house not only conquers death, it can also slow down the ageing process.  This is confirmed when the three visit a Paris nightclub and a stranger, Colonel Charlèze, positively identifies Florence as a woman he knew thirty years ago, even though she is barely twenty.

Exploring the old house, André then comes across several portraits of Florence that were painted at different periods over the last hundred years.  Is it possible she has lived for over a century, her ageing completely arrested by some unknown force residing in the house?  His curiosity aroused, André agrees to assist Piort in locating the source of the life-preserving force, which he believes may be radioactive in origin.  As soon as the source has been found, André is drugged and wakes up beside the road where he had his accident.  Returning to the house, he finds that Piort and Florence have departed, leaving no clue as to their present whereabouts.  Concerned for Florence's safety, André enlists Charlèze's help in finding them, but as he does so he unwittingly falls into a carefully constructed trap...