Upon viewing Spotlight on a Murderer (French: Pleins feux sur l’assassin), I realized something – no matter how original the idea, or how gorgeous the visual aesthetic, a film means nothing if it isn’t executed well. Georges Franju will forever have his name engraved in the canon of great artists purely because of his brilliant horror masterpiece Eyes Without a Face. That work of unhinged genius more than warrants a place amongst the finest films ever made in the genre. Unfortunately, his follow-up to that film was far less impressive – in fact, it was hopelessly disappointing, a convoluted, unlikable attempt at crafting a psychological thriller that tries far too hard to be the perfect blend of Agatha Christie and Last Year at Marienbad (which was released the same year as this film), but rather ends up being an uncomfortable, confusing muddle of a good premise, beautiful visuals and far too many concepts to justify such a film. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not find anything palpable to like about Spotlight on a Murderer – there are some merits, but they are hardly able to justify the complete disregard for a coherent story, no matter how well-crafted this film is. This film could have been a defining masterpiece of the decade, a pivotal addition to the burgeoning Nouvelle Vague, but it squanders every bit of potential it has and becomes an unlikable, confusing film that takes a great premise and butchers it beyond any discernible recognition.

In the French countryside stands an enormous castle that has been home to a noble family, stretching throughout the centuries. The current occupant is on his deathbed, and understanding how his relatives are only concerned with the financial gain they’ll acquire after his death, retreats to a secret alcove, where he dies, preventing his body from being found, and his descendants from receiving their inheritance for five years. As a result, not only are they not allowed to take their share of his vast wealth, they also need to take care of his estate. They decide to turn the castle in a large museum, where visitors can learn about the history of the family and their influence throughout the region over the years. Each of the eight cousins is shown to be relatively selfish, only dedicating themselves to this endeavour because its the only way they will eventually benefit from their uncle’s death. However, when they slowly find themselves dying one by one, Jean-Marie (Jean-Louis Trintignant), the only family member who possesses some semblance of a conscience, begins to question if these deaths are purely the result of unfortunate accidents or the doings of a sinister murderer taking revenge on these selfish individuals for their endless greed.

Spotlight on a Murderer sounds fascinating, doesn’t it? It is a pity that it is one of the dullest films of the era. It takes a lot of effort to make something this lifeless, and somehow Franju manages to create a film that has perhaps the largest incongruency between its premise and the final product. The problem is that Spotlight on a Murderer is not necessarily a bad film – nothing with such an original idea at the core, or such an endlessly captivating visual style can really ever be considered purely bad. The problem is that this film has so much potential that seems to just go entirely wasted, disposed of in favour of a homogenous mass of ideas, none of which are ever explored fully. It is a rare sentiment coming from me, but this film would’ve benefitted from less audacity and rather should have opted to remain relatively formulaic – because as mentioned above, it is heavily inspired by the work of Agatha Christie, and had it focused solely on imbuing this kind of story with Franju’s exceptional eye for detail, the results would’ve been far better. For the most part, complexity and nuance in a film can never really be criticized, and we should focus on celebrating filmmakers that dare to be different. However, it is impossible for me to praise this film for its originality when its realization of these incredible ideas is something so convoluted and disjointed, it almost becomes pretentious. Spotlight on a Murderer is a film that thinks itself smarter than the audience, which is acceptable when the film warrants it through possessing some spark of originality. A glorified murder mystery is certainly not the space to be demonstrating your perceived brilliance, and the final product, while gripping to a point, is ultimately just a cold, lifeless example of the precise opposite of everything audiences love about these stories.

Breaking it down, we can see that Spotlight on a Murderer is really just a decent murder mystery that focuses on a cast of unlikable characters, anchored by one or two that are vaguely less despicable, allowing us the satisfaction of seeing them slowly perish in increasingly violent ways, all the while creating an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. This film certainly did have the right idea – so where precisely did it go wrong? Perhaps the reason Spotlight on a Murderer isn’t nearly as compelling as it should be is because it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It’s clear that Franju was intent on making a classic whodunnit – it is a sub-genre that is certainly very successful, and isn’t one that requires a great deal of originality to be interesting or effective. Yet, he chose to imbue it with a number of other genres – a playful romp amongst the bourgeoisie who are blissfully unaware of their privilege and only become more potent in their despicable actions as the film goes on, a psychological thriller that tries to pervade the mindsets of these individuals, and a morality tale about good deeds triumphing over greed in the end. This film just does not know what it wants to be, and the problem is that it tries to be absolutely everything, which makes for a very confusing experience, because it just simply never reaches any clear crescendo, and the audience is forced to wait for the entire duration before finally receiving some form of satiation. Its a truly puzzling film that just feels incomplete and almost lacking in any discernible soulfulness, and considering this film was made during the years leading up to the apex of the French New Wave, where even the coldest, clinical of films had some sense of compassion at their core, a film like this just feels unnecessarily empty.

Naturally, a film that may not execute its concept well enough can always depend on the performances, especially when its one driven by the cast. Unsurprisingly, this is yet another area in which Spotlight on a Murderer falters, with the acting in this film being far from impressive. Absolutely none of these performances are particularly good, which is not necessarily a product of the actors themselves (there are some very talented performers present in here, some of which even collaborated with the director in his prior film, which demonstrated that he was capable of deriving strong performances when given the right material), but rather the fault of the people who wrote this film, with the characterization in Spotlight on a Murderer being extremely poor. These characters should’ve been so much for interesting – there was potential for them to have distinct, fascinating personalities that would’ve made for some compelling heroes and memorable villains. This is perhaps the last salvation for a film that goes in as many ludicrous directions as this, because when the story fails, at least the audience can rely on the characters to ground it and make it memorable. Yet, in Spotlight on a Murderer, not only are most of these characters dull and without a single iota of real personality, they all come together into a homogenous mass of nasty habits and despicable actions – the murderer killing them off one by one is actually doing the audience a favour, because the majority of these individuals are so shrill and unlikable, watching them for another moment on screen would just be torture. The only reasonably decent performance comes on behalf of Jean-Louis Trintignant, who is at least given some depth. Yet, even his character lacks much nuance, and only serves to be relatively enduring because he possesses something of a moral compass, and acts as the audience surrogate. The performances are not bad, but that’s purely because there was such an overt disregard for these characters and how they were developed, there was absolutely no space for them to acquire any nuance, whether positive or negative.

In conclusion, the only real reason that anyone should bother with Spotlight on a Murderer comes down to the visuals – this is a beautifully-composed film, and is heavily indebted to the school of surrealism. There’s a dreamlike quality to it that makes it quite fascinating to look at, and gives it some depth, even if only momentarily. Franju had a unique visual style, and working with cinematographer Marcel Fradetal in his sophomore feature-length outing, the director crafts a work that is astoundingly beautiful, which is perhaps the only true merit of this overall. However, as gorgeous as this film may be (especially in how it blends surrealism, Expressionism and film noir), it ultimately just isn’t enough, and the film becomes hopelessly dull towards the middle, and when the audience realizes that there is not going to be any discernible improvement, they can’t be blamed for losing interest. Its a film that isn’t disappointing because its bad, but rather because the potential that this film had should’ve made it far better than it actually was, and considering this hails from the director of one of the most iconoclastic works of horror of all time, Spotlight on a Murderer is just a mediocre, uncompromisingly boring film that had a good premise underlying it, but not enough effort from those involved to actually realize it into anything even remotely worthwhile.