Wow! Such a good movie.

I'll tell you why so serious

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Robert Enrico switched off his tape recorder. He just stood there for a few moments. Morricone's score was devastating. The maestro had delivered all right. The title track had blown him away. It began with trickling water drops. Followed by dissonant sounds. But soon a melodious piano could be heard and it was beautiful when the violins kicked in. The director thought he could have a drink now. He could already imagine using this score in his movie. Suddenly he was excited. He could already imagine using this score at the end of the movie. But he had to make sure he wouldn't get carried away with the score. The score could take over the movie.Enrico poured some whiskey and sat in his chair. It was a nice plot based on the Francis Ryck novel. A man escapes from a prison. He hooks up with a strange couple in rural France. He tells them that he harbors a terrible secret about the state. The couple take him in and go out of their way to save him from the authorities. Their relationship becomes complex. The man on the run is inevitably attracted to the beautiful woman who is a redhead. He develops an intense friendship with the husband. He thought about Marlene Jobert from that Godard film. She would do as the redhead. The portly Philippe Noiret as the husband who is glad to be cuckolded. Maybe Trintignant as the man on the run. There was always something very enigmatic about Trintignant. He was unforgettable in Il Sorpasso.Both the prison the man escapes from and the house the couple occupies would look the same. Both made of stone. It would be hard to tell their interiors apart.The film would be up to its neck in paranoia. Right from the time the man escaped. He could already imagine this terrific scene where a man runs up a flight of stairs as Trintignant takes a lift. There would be paranoia between the threesome as well. The woman would get jealous and paranoid as the husband and the man on the run grew closer.There would also be a sepia tinged dream sequences when Trintignant remembers the time he was tortured. This would heighten the sense of paranoia. Of course, the film would not be anything like those American thrillers that expressed paranoia about their Government.The whiskey began to hit Enrico. He wondered if the film would get noticed. Would it be remembered? 40 or 50 years from now? Would there be watchable prints of the movie? Would anyone watch it in 2016? Who knew? (8/10)

"Le secret" was overshadowed by Robert Enrico's blockbuster "Le Vieux Fusil" released the following year.I have always thought that that movie -also featuring Noiret-was largely overrated."Le Secret" is a different matter:it's a return to mystery,irrational,and madness ,tendencies Enrico had displayed in his first(and best)work "Au Coeur de La Vie" (1963).It is far from being as stunning though.It's too long.In its first part,the story drags on and on.Fifteen minutes could have been easily edited out,the story would not have suffered for it.It was the time of paranoia in political movies.In the wake of "Conversation" and "The parallax view" lots of FRench directors jumped on the bandwagon.There was Jacques Deray and "Un Papillon sur l'Epaule" ;Yves Boisset and "Espion Lève-toi" ;Jean-Claude Tramont and "Le Point de Mire" ;and Robert Enrico and "Le Secret" .All those films deal with a huge conspiracy which may or may not exist.Enrico 's movies has good assets :his three leads are adequate ;a disturbing prologue (and a symmetrical epilogue);and characters who change : in the last third,we are not sure that Trintignant's paranoia or would be mythomania has not corrupted his "normal" companions.The military intervention complete with paratroopers and tanks is a bit too much but it adds to the offbeat atmosphere of the film and it reminds us of Enrico's anti-militarism (already obvious in "La Belle Vie" (1964))."Le Secret" is a flawed but interesting work.

"Le Secret," a French movie directed by Robert Enrico, stars Jean Louis Trintignant as a man who has stumbled accidentally upon a state "secret." We never find out exactly what it is, but it is something so awesome and so dangerous that the government first confines him to a mental ward and then hunts him down to eliminate him once he manages to escape. There are some shades of Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" here.After his escape the man is befriended by Philippe Noiret who plays a character of supernatural goodness reminiscent of his role in "The Clockmaker." Noiret and his less altruistic wife Marlène Jobert harbor and protect the man while they wonder whether he is telling them the truth or is indeed the killer which the authorities say is on the loose. Their uncertainty will cost them dearly.The movie is weakened by our never knowing what hideous truth the man has uncovered (a sort of unexplicated Hitchcockian 'MacGuffin') and by an overly oblique directorial style from the man who gave us the unforgettable "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." The principals, nevertheless, are uniformly excellent, and the shock ending managed to frighten me a great deal.

The rude nature of the South West of France alongside the plot of the movie where three well known french actors give the best of themselves in a story that is taken of reality of those years of the 70's. Sublime shots and dialogues, good acting work, a movie that has no need to any Hollywood action and big budgets in order to entertain. If you like France and its mentality, then this movie is for you.