The Man Who Lies (1968) User Reviews (5)

The untrustworthy narrator

[pstumpf · 8/10 · 15 July 2008]

An exercise in duplicitous narration taken to its logical extreme. Nothing the protagonist says about himself or the past can be believed, including his identity: he introduces himself as "Jean Robin", then tells us that he is really "Boris Viasso", and relates the tale of his wartime comrade in the resistance, Jean Robin, who is first portrayed as a hero, then implied to be a traitor. Or was it Viasso himself who was the traitor? Or, since he seems unrecognized in the village, is he merely trying to insinuate himself into the household of three beautiful women: the widow, sister and maid of the late Robin? Robbe-Grillet plays his customary brilliant games with narrative and imagery. There are women in blindfolds, women bound with ropes; a broken glass; death by broken balustrade. All the characters wear contemporary clothing, even in "flashback" to the wartime past, when they interact with soldiers in WWII garb. Beautiful Czech locales - forests, a crumbling castle, a labyrinthine cavern - are filmed in sumptuous black-and-white by Igor Luthor. A memorable sequence of betrayal, with freeze-frames, featuring A R-G's wife, Catherine.

A provocative treat from this great and under-rated master of cinema.

Seen at BAM on July 14, 2008.

Are English Speaking Countries Afraid Of Robbe-Grillet's films ?

[jromanbaker · 8/10 · 20 April 2023]

The question I ask above is I think necessary. Thanks to the BFI bringing out six of his films in an essential boxset some at least in the UK can question this as well. Why were his books read when his films remained practically unknown here ? Is the written word easier than the image ? Certainly in this complex film, ' L'homme qui Ment ' it is much less sexually provocative than some of his others, so why in 1968 was it not noticed ? Set in a country at war a man played well by Jean-Louis Trintignant has either betrayed his best friend to the enemy or he has not. He goes back to the ( betrayed ? ) man's town and finds the women closest to the man, all seemingly quite happy in a heterosexual man's fantasy of lesbian desire. No more spoilers. The images are startling and only a genius, as Robbe-Grillet was, could have created them. Certain scenes remind the viewer that he wrote ' Last Year at Marienbad ' for Alain Resnais, and the soundtrack is composed of metallic sounds ( war ? ) and normal sounds of bells interspersed with gunshots, and the film is extraordinary on the sound level alone. There is also a Gothic feel with forests, and a castle with endless corridors and all this adds to the total atmosphere. I have watched this film several times and it still remains a mystery, where lies could be the truth and the so-called truth lies. So why not a 10 ? Personally I believe his written word is better than his cinema. For me the repetition in his written fictions are more exciting to visualise in my mind than seeing repetitive images on a screen. But Robbe-Grillet was one of the finest creators in the arts, and that is why his cinema should not have been ignored ( or banned ) in the UK for so long a time.

Fascinating to watch, if not to follow

[federovsky · 22 May 2017]

The paranoia of the self-perceiving mind was the basis of a kind of literary movement in France for a while. An amalgam of surrealism, popular psychology, and war trauma - Robbe-Grillet was one of its notables. Here, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a kind of memory-muse, returning to a village occupied by the Germans after the war, purporting, at first, to be a missing resistance hero, but is rebuffed by the locals and constantly changes his story while making a laconic play for the man's widow, sister and maid.

The Sapphic trio of women are the film's chief feature, the camera picking out hundreds of gorgeous poses as they prowl uncertainly around bare rustic interiors. Trintignant underplays it, playfully, as does the director. It's never solemn, with dazzling washed-out images. A picturesquely shabby Czech village seemed to have been commandeered for the production.

The mutating story of the man and his fabrications, and the meaning behind it - presumably guilt - is less interesting than the creativity in the visuals, which are never less than striking, and in the editing, which is sheer artistic genius.

A True Instance Of Cinematic Art !!!!!

[JoeKulik · 10/10 · 15 August 2015]

Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Man Who Lies (1968) is very high on my "films with artistic merit" list. This film is truly worthy of the label Cinematic Art. This is the fist Robbe-Grillet film that I've viewed and it certainly makes me want to view many more.

The generally negative reviews that this film has gotten is due to the fact that all of the available English language reviews that are available seem to have been written by people whose brains have been warped by big studio Hollywood films. This film can only be understood in the context of the Continental European filmmaking tradition, which generally opts for artistic merit over commercial viability.

The most obvious and coherent interpretation of this film is that it portrays a severe form of war induced PTSD that has led to a psychotic break, and an ensuing psychotic hallucination in the main character, Boris. This film, in turn, is a detailed account of that angst filled, psychotic, war horror hallucination. Like all instances of war induced, or battle induced, PTSD, the sufferer keeps reliving the horrific scenes of war that he has experienced. This would explain why at many points in the film, including the very beginning, we see Nazi soldiers in action, while the main thrust of the film clearly takes place AFTER the end of WWII.

As such, this film fits squarely within the boundaries of all other WWII films that were produced in Continental Europe. I have yet to view one such film that doesn't radiate total hopeless, total despair, and the war eradicating all meaning in life, in those people who experienced the horrors of WWII first hand. Even as late as 1991, Lars von Trier's Europa broadcasts this same emotional and visceral message about the horrors of WWII in Continental Europe: total hopeless, total despair, and the war eradicating all meaning in life. This genre of Continental European films about WWII is so consistent, over decades, and across national boundaries, that it truly amazes me. As such, The Man Who Lies fits squarely in that genre, although in a cinematic style that as radical as it is artistic.

From this "psychotic" interpretation of this film, its title is rather paradoxical insofar as it would seem to lead the viewer astray even before he views the film. Perhaps this was the filmmaker's way of deceptively "setting up" the viewer for a rational interpretation of a film that is clearly not rational at all. As such, the seemingly rational explanation of the film embedded in its title would "suck in" and entrap the viewer to seek a rational understanding of a film that clearly has no rational explanation, perhaps inducing some of the same hopelessness, despair, angst, and confusion experienced throughout the film by the protagonist Boris.

This whole film seems to be geared to reinforcing this PTSD. psychotic, hallucinatory theme. This film has a lot of well conceived and well placed, although radical, symbolic imagery. This film has a great deal of radical editing, including interspersing WWII scenes into the main storyline, which obviously is set after the end of WWII. The radical cinematography, with its strange camera angles, its strange camera movements, and an effective blend of close up shots of faces, and inanimate object and locations, with long range shots, often in the same scene, also reinforces the psychotic PTSD theme of this film. The seeming anonymity of Boris when he enters the town is downright spooky, as are the shots of the empty streets in the town. The "castle" in which reside Jan Robin's widow, sister, maid, father, and estate caretaker looks like something out of a well conceive horror movie, with strategically placed cobwebs, otherwise vacant rooms filled with art work and piles of furniture, and a grimy, isolated tower replete with a set of large bells. The sexual encounters that Boris has with the widow, the sister, and the maid are somewhat bizarre, although effectively so, in that they show a man who is a literal stranger to everyone else in film, taking sexual liberties with women that he doesn't know, women who are closely related to the war resistance leader with whom he says he's associated. The continuously changing war stories from Boris, can be just as easily interpreted as the confused rambling of a psychotic mind, as they can be "lies".

This is an excellent film with very high artistic merit. It is very engaging, and compelling, with a well thought out, well executed, and very detailed screenplay. The key to appreciating this film, in my opinion, is not at all to attempt to understand it in rational terms whatsoever, but to appreciate it as a an artistic attempt to convey the horrors of WWII, and its effects on one man. Therefore, appreciation of this film resides at the emotional and visceral level of the viewer, and decidedly not in his mind.

20 Stars !!! 20 Stars !!! 20 Stars !!!

way below par

[jammasta-1 · 4/10 · 17 October 2008]

I saw this movie this summer, at a French movies festival centered on the French New Wave. Circumstances allowed me to compare this with another of Robbe-Grillet's films, Trans-Europ Express. While the latter was fairly interesting (as a story set up on-the-spot, with its author, his wife and a friend negotiating what should happen now when Trintignant and the others are already acting), this was pretty much a disaster. A lot of things which worked well in the other ARG movie are hit-and-miss here. There, the fictitious story allowed for a flat, easy read - it's all a trick, there's nothing worth considering. The story of Boris Varissa/Jean Robin, on the other hand, seems to urge the viewer to set up a huge critical apparatus - only to give him back nothing more than a set of more or less unrelated cuts. On a very theoretical plane, The Man Who Lies could be viewed as a very critical essay on the French collaboration during the war and/or on the falsifying effect produced by a memory that wishes to become something else. Varissa could be one of the bad, a traitor, and the movie a sort of dream-like vision of his - maybe a plain nightmare. However, if we dismiss this interpretation - there isn't too much left. As a study in narratology it's too long and boring. As a piece of surrealism, it's unconvincing and irrelevant. I guess what makes this movie less significant than Trans-Europ Express is the fact that while there being artsy-fartsy was actually part of the game, here it's irritating. One note, however: although I find The Man Who Lies to be a trifle less convincing than Trans-Europ Express, it *was* that much more inspiring. Still, Robbe-Grillet's movie-making is boredom-inducing.