In 1950s London, Dutch painter Jan Van Rooyen has an affair with a rich married Frenchwoman who is supposedly murdered, resulting in Van Rooyen becoming Scotland Yard's prime suspect.In 1950s London, Dutch painter Jan Van Rooyen has an affair with a rich married Frenchwoman who is supposedly murdered, resulting in Van Rooyen becoming Scotland Yard's prime suspect.In 1950s London, Dutch painter Jan Van Rooyen has an affair with a rich married Frenchwoman who is supposedly murdered, resulting in Van Rooyen becoming Scotland Yard's prime suspect.
- Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award
- 1 nomination total
Hardy Krüger
- Jan Van Rooyen
- (as Hardy Kruger)
Edward Cast
- Police Officer at Airport
- (uncredited)
Robert Crewdson
- Police Sergeant
- (uncredited)
Shirley Davien
- Girl on Bus
- (uncredited)
Christina Lubicz
- The Real Jacqueline Cousteau
- (uncredited)
David Markham
- Sir Howard Fenton
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaJoseph Losey had wanted Peter O'Toole to play the detective, but the producers were looking for a better known actor, and so they went with Stanley Baker. Obviously, since this would begin a four picture collaboration with Losey and Baker, the square-jawed Welsh actor had ultimately impressed the director in the role.
- GoofsMorgan grills Van Rooyen in the flat in a bizarre and unprofessional manner that would be supremely unlikely even in the late-1950s Metropolitan Police: prolonged but ad hoc interview at the crime scene itself; displaying the body to the prime suspect; giving unnecessary pertinent information to the prime suspect.
- SoundtracksI'm A Lonely Man
(uncredited)
Music by Richard Rodney Bennett
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer
Sung by Hardy Krüger
Featured review
A pleasing early Losey
It can sometimes be interesting to study the early work of directors who were later to emerge as important figures in cinema. Some show little indication of what is to come (Carol Reed's "Bank Holiday " for instance) while with others the fingerprints are all there (Hitchcock's "The Lodger" and David Lynch's "Eraserhead"). Joseph Losey falls somewhere between these two extremes. An early work such as "Blind Date" has a competence and clearheaded sense of narrative flow that place it on a higher level than most B-style thrillers to emerge from British studios in the '50's but there is little of the original stamp that was to mark his later work such as "The Servant", "The Go-between" and "Accident". These films provide fascinating commentaries that an outsider from the USA brought to bear on the British class system. There is a little in "Blind Date" about the social hierarchy within the British police force, but this is peripheral to Losey's main task of presenting a neat little thriller well. He keeps the tension going nicely to begin with, with a young Dutch artist visiting a flat where he expects to find a woman he has been having a liaison with, only to find himself soon embroiled with the police. The script has a neat way of evading what is going on until some way into the film. Some of the flashbacks go on for rather too long and are somewhat weakened by a rather wooden performance by Micheline Presle as the woman of mystery. Hardy Kruger, on the other hand, as the young Dutchman is excellent. We really identify with his frustration at finding himself in a situation that is beyond his comprehension and control. As the main detective Stanley Baker plays cat and mouse with his customary skill. "Blind Date" is in so sense an important or significant film, but the fact that it was competently made by a director who was later to produce some outstanding works of British cinema makes it worth a look. There are two other good reasons for watching - photography by Christopher Challis and music by Richard Rodney Bennett - both considerable artists in their respective fields.
helpful•204
- jandesimpson
- Aug 8, 2002
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Die tödliche Falle
- Filming locations
- Beaconsfield Film Studios, Station Road, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, UK(studio: Beaconsfield Studios, London, England)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- £138,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 35 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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