''The Third Lover'' (), also titled ''The Eye of Evil'', is a 1962 French–Italian

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Claude Chabrol Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...

. It tells the story of a French journalist in Southern Germany who befriends a novelist and his wife and gradually begins to destroy the couple's lives.

Plot

Albin, a solitary French journalist, is sent to Germany to write an article on noted novelist Andreas Hartmann, who lives in a village outside

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. Albin rents a flat in the same village and, through Hartmann's French wife Hélène, becomes acquainted with the writer and successively the couple's friend. Obsessed to find the dark spot behind their seemingly harmonious marriage, he makes advances to Hélène and, after she tactfully rejects him, spies upon her, convinced that she has an affair. He finally succeeds to detect Hélène and her lover and takes compromising photographs, which he presents to her. Hélène pretends that Andreas knows of her affair but asks Albin not to show the pictures to her husband, explaining that their marriage gave both a mainstay after living a life of instability. Albin confronts Andreas with the photographs, who in a fit of rage stabs Hélène to death and then turns himself over to the police. Trying to find redemption for his scheme, Albin accuses himself for being responsible for Hélène's death, but is ignored by the police. In the final

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique used in radio, television, filmmaking, theatre, and other media in which a descriptive or expository voice that is not part of the narrative (i.e., non- ...

, Albin states that he was unable to find work as a journalist afterwards.

Cast

Jacques Charrier Jacques Charrier (born 6 November 1936) is a French actor, film producer, painter and ceramist. Biography In 1980 he returned to the School of Fine Arts, and went back to painting that was full of references to his two passions, travel and ant ...

as Albin Mercier * Walther Reyer as Andreas Hartmann *

Stéphane Audran Stéphane Audran (born Colette Suzanne Jeannine Dacheville; 8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018) was a French film actress. She was known for her performances in the films of her husband Claude Chabrol, including '' Les Biches'' (1968) and '' Le Bou ...

as Hélène *

Daniel Boulanger Daniel Boulanger (24 January 1922 – 27 October 2014) was a French novelist, playwright, poet and screenwriter. He has also played secondary roles in films and was a member of the Académie Goncourt from 1983 until his death. He was born in Comp ...

as the Commissioner

Production and reception

''The Third Lover'' was written by Chabrol and

Paul Gégauff Paul Gégauff (10 August 1922 – 24 December 1983) was a French screenwriter. He collaborated with director Claude Chabrol on 14 films. His screenplays include '' Plein Soleil'', for which he and director René Clement received an Edgar Award ...

under their mutual pseudonym Matthieu Martial and shot on a modest budget. It met with condescending reviews upon its 1962 release and turned out a financial failure. In Robin Wood and Michael Walker's retrospective analysis in ''Claude Chabrol'' (1970), they compare ''The Third Lover'' with Roman Polanski's ''

Knife in the Water A knife (: knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evidenced ...

'', which came out a year later. They write, "''Knife in the Water'' was an enormous art house success, ''l'Oeil du matin'' a complete box office failure. Both describe a triangle in which a man attaches himself to a married couple and the acting-out of tensions that arise. To my mind ''L’Oeil du matin'' is overwhelmingly superior, it has a richness and complexity of characterisation that Polanski does not even approach. Here the marriage is given a definite, positive value: without doubt Andreas’s reaction to the photographs -'Happiness is fragile' - is the most moving moment in the film. In ''Knife in the Water'' the marriage has been devalued to almost nothing. And where Chabrol demonstrates (as in so many of his films) the confusion between appearances, and the reality inside the characters, one feels very little sense of there being anything inside Polanski’s characters. Man and youth are reduced to a common childishness; the woman is simply a femme-objet."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Third Lover, The 1962 films Films shot in Germany French crime drama films Italian crime drama films Films directed by Claude Chabrol 1962 crime drama films Films set in West Germany 1960s French films 1960s Italian films Films with screenplays by Paul Gégauff Films scored by Pierre Jansen