ベストセラー作家のタイヴィアン・ジョーンズは、イタリアのヴェネツィアで悠々自適な生活を送っていた。だが、妖艶なフランス人女性エヴァ・オリヴィエと偶然出会ったことで、その生活は一変する。すでにフランチェスカ・フェラーラとの結婚を控えているにもかかわらず、彼はエヴァに一目で心を奪われてしまう。 しかし、エヴァの愛を勝ち取ることは容易ではない。彼女は愛よりも金に関心があるのだ。それでもタイヴィアンは執着を捨てきれず、人生を破滅させかねないほどの情熱でエヴァを追い求めていく。
AIが作品の魅力を深く読み解いています
監督: Joseph Losey
脚本: Hugo Butler / Evan Jones / James Hadley Chase
音楽: Michel Legrand
制作: Raymond Hakim / Robert Hakim / Giorgio Baldi
撮影監督: Gianni Di Venanzo / Henri Decaë
制作会社: Paris-Film Production / Interopa Film
Stanley Baker ("Tyvian") is a rough man from the Welsh mining school of hard knocks who has written an internationally recognised bestseller. When he finds himself in Venice, not only is he, culturally, a fish out of water but also finds himself the target of a mysterious and manipulative Jeanne Moreau ("Eve") who quickly ensnares him in a web of charm and seduction rendering him impotent to her toxic power over him. It's beautifully shot on location but otherwise I found it all a little pretentious. Both principal characters polarise and epitomise the worst in each other - and of society in general. His poor, downtrodden fiancée "Francesca" (Virna Lisi) is probably the only person in the film with whom you could possibly empathise; and frankly I think she would be far better advised to leave them both to it and explore the Murano glassworks instead. It is quite an interesting historical retrospective of life in Venice in the early 1960s, but otherwise I think Joseph Losey has rather over-indulged himself.
