Blind Date

Hardy Krüger - Jan Van Rooyen
Stanley Baker - Inspector Morgan
Micheline Presle - Jacqueline Cousteau
John Van Eyssen - Inspector Westover
Gordon Jackson - Sergeant
Robert Flemyng - Sir Brian Lewis

Adapted from Leigh Howard's novel, this intelligent thriller from Joseph Losey is one of the directors more underrated films. An impoverished Dutch painter living in London, Jan (Hardy Kruger), falls in love with a sophisticated married French woman, Jacqueline (Micheline Presle), slightly his elder, her relationship with him turns from art student into mistress. After initially meeting at the Tate Gallery, Jacqueline persuades Jan to allow her the use of his studio and to teach her how to paint – but this is merely a ruse to seduce him and commence an affair that will be dictated by her.

Some time later, Jan hurriedly arrives to keep a rendezvous at her swanky apartment and is confronted by the police who accuse him of having murdered her. After being grilled by hard-nosed Welsh Inspector Morgan (Stanley Baker), via flashbacks the web of deceit involving Jan slowly unravels. The case then becomes a little more complicated because Jan believed she was married, and police commissioner Sir Brian Lewis (Robert Flemyng) intimates to Morgan that he doesn’t want a scandal involving high-ranking diplomat Sir Howard Fenton, who the victim was also a mistress to. After Morgan and Jan meet Lord and Lady Fenton at the airport, it becomes apparent the case is more complex than it appears.