A Double Tour (1959) DVD

The third film from Claude Chabrol and his first in colour, Á Double Tour is both a characteristically suspenseful thriller and a cruel portrait of bourgeois life.

Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine), a respectable middle-class man living in Province with his wife and two children, is having an affair with a younger woman, Léda (Antonella Lualdi). His wife, the redoubtable Thérèse Marcoux (Madeleine Robinson), is determined to avoid a scandal at any price, even to the extent of breaking off her daughter's engagement when she learns that her future son-in-law Laszlo (Belmondo) has been sympathising with her husband. Then the unthinkable happens - Léda is found dead. But who is the killer?

Taking the part of Laszlo Kovacs after first choice Jean-Claude Brialy fell ill, Belmondo gives an impressively restrained performance that in conjunction with his following film, A bout de soufflé, set him on the road to stardom.