El hijo

Yves Montand gives here a delightful performance as a French gangster in New York who decides one day to return to Corsica where he is born and find out how was father died. He discovers that the old man was killed during a hunting party. Marcel Bozzuffi is also very convincing as a hired killer disguised as a real estate agent. But a little flaw in the script though. When he meets Montand in the mountain, and then shows how he uses a gun and being a sharp shooter, it would have been better if he had faked to miss the target. But on the condition that there should have been another scene before in the film ( that was not) in which we would have seen him being on the contrary a real gunfighter. The scene with Montand - Bozzuffi missing the target - would have meant that Bozzuffi hid something to Montand. The audience then would have wondered WHY this character, does he hide his skills with a gun, what is the purpose?

This kind of screen writing trick, where the audience already knows something about a character, far more than another character does, is rarely used. And for me, that's real suspense, because we wonder why does he hide, or what will be the behavior of the second character when he'll find out, or when will he find out?

See what I mean?

Anyway, I love this French movie typically of the seventies and shot in the splendid Corsican settings. Director Pierre Granier Deferre will give us twelve years later L'HOMME AUX YEUX D'ARGENT, with more or less the same plot; a man returning home after many years before facing his tragic fate.