Boileau-Narcejac's novels are anything but boring:everyone knows what Alfred Hitchcock and Henri-Georges Clouzot did with "d'entre les morts" and" "celle qui n'était plus" :"Vertigo" and "les diaboliques" both in the IMDb top 250.
Sergio Gobbi adapted "maldonne" and ,unlike his illustrious (and much superior) colleagues,kept the title of the book.As the first half of the story consisted of frames of mind of the hero,Sergio Gobbi cannot find equivalents -he doesn't even use voice over- and it's a pretty boring affair which the actors' talent (Pierre Vaneck,Jean Topart ,Robert Hossein) or ex-Kirk Douglas's protégée Elsa Martinelli's beauty do nothing to rectify.Like in every Boileau-Narcejac plot,the hero is framed :he's got to play the part of a departed man to allow his widow to latch on to a valuable inheritance.But of course things are not what they seem.The second part,which includes black and white flashbacks (Hossein's nightmares)is barely more exciting than the first one.I will not tell why,because it would be a spoiler but it's stupid to have cast Hossein and Vaneck because they do not look like each other and if the plot made sense ,they should.
Sergio Gobbi adapted "maldonne" and ,unlike his illustrious (and much superior) colleagues,kept the title of the book.As the first half of the story consisted of frames of mind of the hero,Sergio Gobbi cannot find equivalents -he doesn't even use voice over- and it's a pretty boring affair which the actors' talent (Pierre Vaneck,Jean Topart ,Robert Hossein) or ex-Kirk Douglas's protégée Elsa Martinelli's beauty do nothing to rectify.Like in every Boileau-Narcejac plot,the hero is framed :he's got to play the part of a departed man to allow his widow to latch on to a valuable inheritance.But of course things are not what they seem.The second part,which includes black and white flashbacks (Hossein's nightmares)is barely more exciting than the first one.I will not tell why,because it would be a spoiler but it's stupid to have cast Hossein and Vaneck because they do not look like each other and if the plot made sense ,they should.