The knife-grinder
tipped over for want of the necessary, who climbs the thing to catch the
murderer, lately fond of caviar sandwiches and vodka there.
A spoof of the Deux
Magots crowd, you can spot Breton and Sartre in the sweep early on.
“The City of
Paris” is credited and deserves it, as the anonymous and otherwise imbecilic New York Times critic observed.
The rich aunt is
a good American and, with her maid, dies there for a million.
Laughton is
Maigret, superintending the case.
A director of
genius handles it all.
The joke is that the
CIA are supposedly critics.
A three-piece
suit in the Kenyon Review sells out for a living, laugh that off but
it’s true.
The Buddha
answers all this bullshit out of the jewel in his forehead.
A great literary
satire.
Reviewers had no
idea of this conversion on the playing field, no wonder.
With James Mason
as Y.Y. Go, this is an important variant of Brooks’ Lord Jim, without
the slightest doubt.