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.

With this time of the cuckoo, I did not hear a waltz. This Joseph Losey drama is a very depressing account of amoral people, either using others (leading man Stanley Baker steals his brother's work; leading lady Jeanne Moreau steals his heart and stomps on it), and two decent people get hurt in the meantime. Virni Lisi could have chosen director Giorgio Albertazzi who truly loves her, but she marries Baker who ends up breaking her heart. Baker it seems would rather have his heart smashed to bits by the self centered prostitute Moreau than be with the completely decent Lisi. The years go by. One dies, and an obsession continues, and there's no "Fatal Attraction" ending in sight, unfortunately.

With lots of Venice locations (and a bit of Rome), this would have been more pictorial had it been in cplor, but the black and white photography is as black and white as the characters played by Moreau and Baker. You get a hint of the greatness this could have been, but the novel this is based on is one that apparently either could not be filmed, or perhaps the wrong director was chosen. I had no sympathy for Baker, yet I wanted Moreau to at least get some comeuppance. I guess I had to create that in my mind knowing what her future as she aged had in store for her, but that was more my guess than anything that the story reveals. Baker has Sean Connery style looks, but unfortunately, his character is indeed a loser. The repeat of two Billie Holliday over and over after a while added to the tediousness. Not the artistic triumph Losey hoped for, just a pretentious bore.

I enjoyed this upon its initial release but then heard no more of it until the recent Blu-ray release. It was poorly received at the time but I saw in the context of the films of Antonioni and Bunuel whose films I was discovering at the time. Indeed there is something of an Antonioni feel to this with a misty and mysterious Venice adding to the seeming strangeness of the allure of Jeanne Moreau's character particularly with the, admittedly dressed down, Virni Lisi and her more obvious beauty. But this is not a tale of an enigmatic and vulnerable woman a little out of reach, for this is from a book by the British writer of the rough, tough and sexy, James Hadley Chase. Much maligned by critics at the time he had considerable popular success and told of his inspiration to write coming from the equally uncompromising, James M Caine. So, no this does not have the ambiguity and dreamlike romanticism that a film by the great Italian director might. If anything this might be closer to the work of Bunuel, shot through with obsession, a casting aside of bourgeoise morality and more than a hint of masochism. Stanley Baker who had been fantastic in the marvellous The Criminal (1960) also with Losey is also good here but perhaps made to look a little second best now and again by Moreau on absolute peak form in a devastating and uncompromising role. She had made the ever popular Jules and Jim at the same time but there is no hint of the happy go lucky flirt here. Set in Rome and Venice it is the Venetian scenes that set the tone and contribute to the sense of doom that permeates much of the film. Glorious but worrying scenes of half glimpsed boats and masts and barely populated islets plus an empty St Mark's Square in the early hours, mist enclosing its exits and entrances. Losey apparently had much trouble getting, what he describes as a most personal work to the screen but it is a brilliant work and a prime example of just how great British cinema briefly became during the 1960s.