morrison-dylan-fan After seeing a fellow poster mention on a message board that they were planning to catch up on works from auteur François Truffaut (FT). Owning a small collection of FT DVDs waiting to play,I decided to join in. Whilst checking what years the movies had come out,I was surprised to find that FT had co-written (but not directed) a Spy flick,which led to me spying on Agent H21.The plot:During WWI Mata Hari works as a dancer who is secretly spying for the Germans,with Hari sharing info given by her admiring fans. One day Hari is given the task of distracting François Lasalle,so his briefcase can be stolen. What is planned as an easy mission is made difficult by Lasalle handcuffing his case to a chair,which leaves Hari with the task of keeping him distracted so others can obtain it,which causes Hari to fail in her mission to not fall in love with a target.View on the film:Appearing topless in the opening dance number, (which 007 would not do until Sophie Marceau in 1999's The World Is Not Enough) Jeanne Moreau gives an enticing performance as Hari,whose romance with Lasalle, Moreau (who wisely does not try to put on a fake accent) brings out with a subtle dropping of Hari's guard,that Moreau nicely matches with a quick-witted edge for the espionage action. Joined in the spying game by special appearances of François Truffaut regulars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Charles Denner and the gorgeous Marie Dubois, Jean-Louis Trintignant gives a very good performance as Lasalle,whose lack of awareness over Hari's spying is given a charmingly light comedic touch by Trintgnant.Accepting this mission when the French New Wave and the Euro Spy genre were at their peak,the screenplay by co-writer/(with François Truffaut) director Jean-Louis Richard plays loose on the real life of Hari to target a FNW tragic romance with Spy thrills. With the romance between Hari and "François" slyly nodding to Truffaut's affair with Moreau, the writers become ill at ease over carrying out the task,as the would-be New Wave romance between Hari and Lasalle is unable to blossom due to the espionage tugging at the strings threading a tragic romance final,whilst the spy action keeps being withheld from fully turning into thrilling set-piece missions for Hari, by the need for the missions to be linked to the Lasalle romance.Whilst the choice to shoot in black and white leads to the title missing the Pop-Art colour it looks ready-made for, (that Umberto Lenzi used very well in the 1965 playful woman-led Spy flick 008: Operation Exterminate ) Jean-Louis Richard's effortlessly switches from writing for Truffaut to directing a Truffaut script, via closely working with cinematographer Michel Kelber to deliver glittering, fluid tracking shots,which along with following each stage of Hari's missions,also flow into the New Wave. Eyeing Alfred Hitchcock for Hari's challenges, Richard's impressively crosses the New Wave fluidity with the crystallized tension of the Thriller,by a witty use of physical comedy that gives Hari's attempts to grab a briefcase and find papers in an officers room an unpredictability,thanks to whip-pans landing when the punch line hits,and Mata Hari starts planning to escape with her license to kill unseen.

Myriam Nys Over the years a number of historians have said that Mata Hari's supposed involvement in espionage activities was doubtful. (Whether this is true or not I don't know.) Anyway, the movie starts with the clear understanding that Mata Hari was a spy working for the Germans - and a very wily and active spy at that. The movie has its qualities, but it has one major flaw : the Mata Hari character is a disjointed collection of characteristics and impulses, rather than a fully-rounded and coherent person. Her psychology is all over the place. The same can be said about her decision to work as a spy - let alone a spy for the Germans, who are threatening her second (and probably much beloved) homeland France. There may be a casting error involved : Mrs. Moreau looks and sounds too intelligent and too sane to make some of the truly delirious life choices displayed on the screen. In other words : this Mata Hari isn't all that compelling or convincing. As a result even her grand passion becomes uninteresting. Does she really love her François ? Does she lust for him ? Does she see him as a cover, a scapegoat, an investment ? Does she tell herself that she is in love with him because she needs to reassure herself of her niceness and goodness ? Is he just the final self-indulgent fling of an aging beauty ? Who knows - and more importantly, who cares ? While we're at it, Mrs. Moreau is as French as the Louvre : her famously beautiful mouth is free of even the slightest hint of a foreign accent. This tends to undermine the portrayal of Mata Hari as an international temptress with an alluring but shady past. Finally I should say that I was underwhelmed by the nature of the espionage work, which, at times, veered strangely into comic or melodramatic pastiche. Give some of these scenes a very, very slight twist and it's "Carry On Spying" or "A funny thing happened on the way to the sofa".Watch out for the very, very last images, after the heroine has been executed : they're hyper-romantic and manipulative nonsense. (Time for a quick poll. Dear reader : how would YOU have ended the movie ? Personally I would have liked to see Chairman Mao perform a Dutch clog dance, but I'm funny that way.)

jrfishersf-1 Does anybody know the correct aspect ratio for this film? It seems to be as mysterious as Mata Hari herself.IMDb says 4:3, the same as the Video Dimensions (CK596) DVD package. However, the Video Dimensions disc presents the film at 1.77:1. The included trailer is 2.35:1. Scenes from the film in the trailer include material from the sides not in the film, suggesting that the film is, in fact, a 2.35:1 film cropped to 1.77:1 to avoid letter-boxing. Or was the film shot at 4:3 and then cropped at the top and bottom for exhibition at other aspect ratios?Adding to the confusion is that Amazon's French website lists two versions of the film at 1.66:1.As for the film itself, after seeing it referenced in Jeanne Moreau's obituaries and after seeing Greta Garbo's 1931 version, I wanted to see Ms. Moreau's interpretation of the role. Like other great actresses, she will be best remembered for her major roles. It was a pleasure to see her here as well. My rating of 7 is based on the fact that biopics often depict the highlights of the subject's life while fictionalizing much of the rest. I will leave it to the experts on Mata Hari's life to decide if her wartime activities depicted here are accurate.

gridoon2018 Maybe the fault lies mostly with me: I was expecting, based on the promotional material that I could find about "Mata Hari, Agent H21", a more salacious and spicy re-telling of the tale of the notorious female spy, but this film is quite tame, even by its own era's standards: we never even get to see a full Mata Hari dance, although the opening sequence teases us with one. Jeanne Moreau is arguably miscast (nationality-wise) but nonetheless convincing in the title role; however, she is portrayed here pretty one-sidedly as a pure heart caught in bad circumstances. The film is also rather lacking in action and suspense; on the other hand, the finale, with a small incident from earlier in the movie coming into play in an unexpected way, is fairly strong. ** out of 4.