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Run rabbit run.
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Philipp Labro´s Sans mobile apparent with Dominique Sanda and Jean-Louis Trintignant
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Clues only please!
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Clément & Lai strike back !
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Lai? Dont steal Ennios credit!
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Posted: |
Sep 8, 2014 - 12:18 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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An avowed devotee of American detective thrillers, French journalist-filmmaker Philippe Labro based WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE (1971) on one of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, Ten Plus One, changing the locale from a bustling U.S. metropolis to the French Riviera and structuring the film with homages to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and the hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart pictures of the 1940s. The film starred Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Sanda, and Laura Antonelli, and had a effective supporting role by writer Erich Segal. Ennio Morricone scored the film. Upon the movie’s Paris premiere, Variety’s “Mosk” called it “a bright and successful action picture” that not only “captures the spirit, fun and drive of its forerunners” “but stands on its own due to fine playing, brisk plotting and effective direction.”
With the film’s U.S. release in 1972, Pauline Kael said that “You can have a felicitous good time” at this “affectionate, unconcealed imitation of THE BIG SLEEP.” According to Kael, WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE proved that “the French can now do better with a certain kind of laconic American thriller involving the corrupt rich than the Americans can . . . Labro is a fine technician, and he has assimilated the American genre into his own style; his mind is steeped in Raymond Chandler, but the movie comes out classically French.” And Judith Crist termed the film “a good tough ‘tec movie . . . old-fashioned in the best sense.”
WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE has not had any home video release of which I am aware. Although it was originally released in the U.S. by 20th Century Fox, the film may have fallen into the public domain.
In 1996, copyright was automatically restored in certain foreign works that were then in the public domain in the United States but were protected by copyright in the source country. Owners of a restored work were directed to notify reliance parties if the owner of the rights planned to enforce their rights. One means of notification was filing with the Copyright Office a Notice of Intent to Enforce (NIE) a Restored Copyright. On 31 December 1997, Philippe Labro filed a “Notice of intent to enforce a copyright restored under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act” for three films that he directed, on behalf of himself and Ritz Productions, SARL. The three films were WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE (Sans mobile apparent), CHANCE AND VIOLENCE (Le hasard et la violence), and THE HEIR (L'heritier). So, it appears as if control of the film has reverted to the director, who is now 76 years old.
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Would LOVE to see this one out on DVD or Blu-ray at long last. I remember seeing this in Chicago when it first came out in the subtitled version and loved it. I then saw it in Milwaukee about a month later in a dubbed version where it seemed to lose a lot without the actor's original voices. Still a great Morricone score.
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At least we wil know it when chickenhearted sneaks in a japanese poster of it in a few weeks!!
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