Weak Spot
aka Le faille. Radiance comes up with yet another exotic Eurothriller. Author Antonis Samarakis’ first-person experience informs this sophisticated study of the psychology of detectives operating in a police state. An apparently ordinary guy is snatched from the street and accused of being a subersive; two cops take him ‘for a ride’ in hopes that he’ll talk. Ugo Tognazzi is the pigeon and Michel Piccoli & Mario Adorf are the ‘friendly’ potential torturers. Peter Fleischmann’s sly direction underscores a number of story twists and surprises. The music score by Ennio Morricone seals the deal.
Weak Spot
Blu-ray
Radiance Films
1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 111 min. / La faille, La smagliatura, Der dritte Grad, The Flaw / Street Date January 27, 2025 / Available from Radiance Films / £17.99
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Ugo Tognazzi, Mario Adorf, Adriana Asti, Dimos Starenios, Thymios Karakatsanis, Kostas Sfikas, Nina Andoulinaki, Eva Krini, Kostas Baladimas, Vangelis Kazan, Panayotis Fyrios.
Cinematography: Luciano Tovoli
Production Designer, Costume Designer: Dionysis Fotopoulos
Stunts: Rémy Julienne, Benito Stefanelli
Film Editor: Claudine Bouché
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Scenario by Jean-Claude Carrière, Martin Walser, Peter Fleischmann from the novel The Flaw by Antonis Samarakis
Co-producers: Véra Belmont, Raymond Danonm, Alberto Dionisi, Jacques Dorfmann, Peter Fleischmann, Michel Piccoli
Directed by Peter Fleischmann
Sometimes a marginal film ‘not for everybody’ will seem unusually timely. This fascinating, little known Eurothriller from Radiance got our attention with its trio of stars: Michel Piccoli, Ugo Tognazzi and Mario Adorf. Piccoli served as one of the producers. The music is by Ennio Morricone, which definitely sweetens the deal.
Greek author Antonis Samarakis had been imprisoned by the Nazis in WW2, but escaped. He is considered the most influential postwar Greek writer after Nikos Katzanzakis. His 1965 book The Flaw is a police story about the abuse of power in a police state. Two years later Greece was overthrown by a military junta that ruled until 1973, suspending civil rights under martial law. Italian director Costa-Gavras dramatized the beginning of this ‘Regime of the Generals’ in his 1969 classic “Z”.
Although set in Greece during the Regime, 1975’s Weak Spot is not a political exposé like “Z.” It could happen in any country with an extralegal secret police system. Director Peter Fleischmann is one of the New German Cinema figures of the 1960s, but less well known than Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Volker Schlöndorff. Fleischmann’s screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, a frequent collaborator, was very prolific: Danton, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Return of Martin Guerre, Viva Maria!, The Outside Man, The Tin Drum and many more.
‘The Flaw’ became La faille in France and Weak Spot in English. The intense first-person narrative begins like a Kafka tale, with a man arrested seemingly at random by Secret Policemen.
In Athens (we think) travel agent Georgis (Ugo Tognazzi) pays little attention as a police raid across the street results in the death of a suspect, by suicide. Georgis then stops off to visit his girlfriend (Adriana Asti). Getting a drink in a sports bar, he’s suddenly detained for no apparent reason, whisked away to an impersonal police station. There he is strip-searched and given a ‘casual’ but harsh interrogation by a Police Superintendent (Dimos Starenios) who accuses him, without evidence, of being part of a terror network. The Superintendent then assigns two police underlings to the case, with a special, ‘experimental’ plan. Instead of sending Georgis straight into a torture session, they’ll take him on a drive to somewhere for an undisclosed reason — naturally presumed to be torture. The hope is that Georgis will relax on the way, and start talking.
‘The Investigator’ (Michel Piccoli) has an unblemished record with the force, but was the officer in charge when that suspect killed himself rather than be arrested. ‘The Manager’ (Mario Adorf) seems more of a hothead, a roughneck who finds time on the job to run off and visit a prostitute. A road detour and a car breakdown cause them to miss a ferry. The Manager leaves to work on those problems while The Investigator stays with Georgis. They while away the day waiting in a fishing village.
It’s a strange game of cat and mouse. Georgis openly says he won’t try to escape, so as not to give them an excuse to kill him. But he also tells The Investigator that their ruse isn’t working: Georgis knows the ferry schedules well, and calls their bluff about missing a passage. The pressure starts to go in the other direction as The Investigator realizes that other facts about the assignment have been withheld from him, too: this odd ‘take a trip’ scheme may be to test him, not the suspect.
Nobody is accountable: cops can ‘disappear’ just as easily as suspected terrorists. That’s only the first of a number of uneasy twists in Weak Spot, that eventually lead to a very different escape bid.
Weak Spot gives us three sweaty men under pressure. Only the Investigator dresses decently. He’s overdressed for the heat, but can’t remove his jacket because he’s wearing a shoulder holster. The interaction goes way beyond good cop – bad cop tricks. Georgis is only initially indignant — all involved know that he may soon be dead and ‘disappeared’ without his actual guilt and innocence ever becoming an issue. He cooperates, grudgingly. Georgis and The Investigator do get to talking, but the conversation goes in circles. Georgis can’t afford to mention his girlfriend, for her safety. The Investigator gets caught up in more lies … is he really married and unhappy, or is he working an angle to befriend Georgis?
The dialogue continues throughout their afternoon and evening in the fishing village, with the given that neither man can believe anything said by the other. Everything is … tentative.
The ‘casual’ stayover in the beach town creates some good situations, as when Georgis chats up two young women. Despite the obvious age discrepancy the girls allow themselves to be treated to ice cream. Could they just be waiting for an invite to dinner? Georgis and The Investigator become aware that they are being observed by other police agents.
Saying more about plot details would ruin this very original story. When the action gets going, the show becomes a believable chase in some city streets. Although they repeatedy shake the police agents on their trail, they don’t understand how the pursuers can keep finding them. The Investigator begins to worry: are his colleagues shadowing the suspect, or him?
Car stunt specialist Rémy Julienne handles the rowdy car action, a ‘chase’ designed for realism rather than spectacle. The scariest thing is watching Mario Adorf (or his stunt driver) almost run down people on the street with his bad driving. Sergio Leone’s actor-stuntman Benito Stefanelli stages some impressive stuntwork. In a gritty, believable fight Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli demolish a hotel room. Georgis even climbs out on a hotel ledge — a genre cliché but here with a different meaning. In another stunt Piccoli is knocked down in the street, and sustains a non-glamorous but painful scrape on his leg.
Director Fleischmann begins his film with an unbroken 90-second shot that incorporates an impressive stunt illusion. The camera shot tilts up from the street for just a few seconds, at which time a lot of off-screen scrambling had to take place, to position and then remove a Stunt Drop bag for a three-story fall. The illusion is perfect, including a subtle camera move at the end that reveals that the entire scene is being observed from a travel agency across the street. ↓ Happy American tourists show up here and there in the story, unaware that they are witnessing major police abuses.
A desire for more commercial appeal may have prompted the early nude bedroom romp with Adriana Asti. It establishes travel agent Georgis as a carefree guy not expecting to be arrested ‘for nothing at all,’ like Henry Fonda’s luckless musician in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man. When Georgis is searched, the police scrutinize some circles he’s drawn on a piece of paper — not knowing that they are just doodles of his girlfriend’s breasts.
The three stars play well together out on the dusty road, in the little tourist-oriented fishing village, and in police headquarters. The movie has no scenes of depraved torture, but the normalization of brutality is always present. A cop’s afternoon task is to play back audio tapes of a torture session, and take written notes. Just more business as usual.
The deeper aspects of Weak Spot are connected to some big spoilers. In broad terms, the plot dynamic reminds this writer a bit of the American noir The Narrow Margin. In both movies an ‘upright cop’ learns that he has not been told everything about his assignment. But Piccoli’s ‘Investigator’ isn’t being tested to see if he’s corrupt. The superintendent’s strategy puts the reality of a police dictatorship into terms that are almost profound. The police state assumes that everyone is flawed, guilty of something. The fundamental premise is that the system makes no distinction between those that are arrested and those that do the arresting.
In Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, Ernie Kovacs’ Cuban secret policeman calmly explains that Englishman Alec Guinness has no reason to be afraid of Batista’s torture chambers: the foreigner ‘is not of the torture-able class.’ In author Antonis Samarakis’ vision of a police state, lies and torture are the norm. Everyone is in the torture-able category.
Radiance Films’ Blu-ray of Weak Spot is an excellent new 4K restoration by StudioCanal, said to be from the original negative. Cameraman Luciano Tovoli ( The Passenger, Tenebrae) achieves a fine docu-real mood, on the beach and in a museum. Even the car chase car interiors feel 100% real. Actor-producer Michel Piccoli would hire Tovoli for the same year’s Leonor, a gothic horror film directed by Juan Luis Buñuel.
Ennio Morricone provides one of his grinding, pounding crime tracks … not particularly memorable, but effective as punctuation to the action scenes. As with the thriller “Z,” the setting is Greece but everyone speaks French. The three leads indicate a French-German-Italian co-production.
We pay special attention to Radiance extras, the first stop to learn more about their unusual releases. Even with a horror film that I know very well, their experts invariably surprise with new facts and observations. Travis Woods’ commentary digs into Weak Spot’s literary background and its notable artistic collaborators, and has room left over for an analysis of director Fleischmann’s visual style. Even better, the commentary clears up a couple of questions we had. It’s easy to lose track of a movie where even basic facts about the characters remain indefinite.
Critic and publisher Kat Ellinger’s excellent insert essay lays out the film’s message and tone. Ms. Ellinger’s analysis of this socio-political thriller is focused and persuasive. The movie is listed as Region A+B, and played well in my Region A-restricted U.S. player. ← Radiance says that the arresting cover graphic is based on original advertising art by Roland Topor of Fantastic Planet. Topor also co-wrote Peter Fleischmann’s film Die Hamburger Krankheit.
Weak Spot
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New audio commentary by critic Travis Woods
New featurette on the Ennio Morricone music score by Lovely Jon
Archival TV interview with Michel Piccoli (1975)
20-page insert pamphlet with an essay by Ellinger.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Scavano case is insert pamphlet
Reviewed: January 2, 2025
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I am fascinated by these euro thrillers of the 1970s.
I enjoyed your excellent assessment of the Weak Spot based upon the Antonis Samarakis novel The Flaw. Please allow me to comment on your speculation that a “desire for more commercial appeal may have prompted the early nude bedroom romp.” The sketch of the breasts of the character portrayed by Adriana Asti Is a key component of the novel and is included as an illustration in its text as well as on the dust jacket of the American first edition. The novel was also adapted for film in 1983 by the Iranian director Mohammad Reza Alami. In the introduction to a collection of Samarakis short stores translated by Andrew Horton, it is mentioned that the The Flaw was made into a Japanese TV drama but I can find no documentation confirming this. Incidentally, have a copy of the Flaw signed by Samarakis in Athens on November 13, 1969 (during the Greek General regime) with a friendly inscription to “Mr. Spyros Skouras” who I assume is the well-known Hollywood producer once described by Billy Wilder as “the only Greek tragedy that I know.”