Main Cast: Eddie Constantine, Barbara Laage, Stefan Schnabel, Claude Cerval
Release Year: 1961
Country: IT/FR
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Eddie Constantine stars as Jarvis, an American covert operator working for the Secret Service, in this routine spy drama-comedy by director Pierre Montazel. Jarvis has been sent to Portugal with the assignment of uncovering a double agent working out of Lisbon. Without taking too many detours into female entanglements or alcoholic hazes, Jarvis manages to pose as someone the double agent just might want to get in touch with. He figures if the mouse is big enough, the cat might be interested. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Review
This French-made action movie is closer in spirit to American detective thrillers than to the spy thrillers that came after it -- for starters, it's in black-and-white; and it also features a score by the Jazz Group of Paris and pianist Martial Solal that's constantly calling attention to itself. Laced with the hard-boiled dialogue, as well as more suggestive male/female banter than one could necessarily have gotten away with in America in 1961, and the wry French sense of humor that runs through it, the movie ends up as a kind of Euro-answer to the sort of fiction that Mickey Spillane was generating in print, as well as the crime/caper movies that Hollywood was putting out in the 1950s, mostly as B-pictures. And fans of the latter, or of Solal's playing -- which is very prominent on the soundtrack -- may well want to give Ça Va Être Ta Fête a look. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
