Le Silencieux (1973)

aka The Silent One

aka Escape to Nowhere

When a delegation of Soviet nuclear physicists concerned with nuclear fusion visit London, one among their number, one Anton Haliakov (Lino Ventura) apparently dies under rather dubious circumstances. In truth, MI5 is faking the man’s death, for they believe he is actually the French nuclear physicist Clément Tibère, who has supposedly killed but in truth kidnapped by the Soviets some sixteen years ago. That turns out to be quite true, but Tibère’s not at all happy for his unasked for rescue. It’s not that he’s much of a believer in the communist cause as interpreted by Soviet Russia, he’s just convinced that the KGB’s going to find and kill him sooner or later, and he rather likes being not dead.

His scepticism is certainly not unfounded, for the British spies, in classically cynical fashion, are really not at all interested in his well-being. They only want some information about who the Soviet spies among their own nuclear physicists are. Tibère’s just meant to tell them and then go on his merry way, with a bit of money and without any promises of protection as his prize. Eventually, after some threats and a bit of torture, Tibère gives the British what they want, and they do indeed lift hardly a finger to at least get the man out of London alive. Fortunately – it would be a short film otherwise – Tibère did work for allied intelligence during World War II, and so does know some tradecraft, managing to evade the KGB agents who are quickly on his trail, at least for a time. He decides that if he’s going to be killed anyway, he might as well be killed at home in France, and proceeds to make his way there. Perhaps he’s even going to find a way to save his life in the end?

Claude Pinoteau’s Le Silencieux belongs to the earnest kind of spy film, far from James Bond and Eurospy shenanigans, aiming for a serious treatment of espionage, and demonstrating quite a bit of the melancholy and philosophical thought in the existentialist manner that dwell on this branch of the spy movie tree.

Of course, being a serious film made in a very serious manner, I can’t help but nitpick a little at one of its central conceits, namely, that MI5 would just set Tibère loose after squeezing a small, if important, amount of information out of him. I’m not suggesting they’d have too many ethical concerns here to let him go to his doom, but given that Tibère has been part of the Soviet nuclear program for sixteen years, seems to have been trusted enough to be taken to the West, and is a frigging nuclear physicist, you’d think they’d find other informational and practical uses for him. But then we wouldn’t have a film whose main thrust is showing Ventura making his unsmiling way through Europe, chased by spies through various gritty suspense and low-key action sequences, so I do understand the actual reason for this ever so slight oversight.

Said suspense and action sequences are fine enough: nobody would ever confuse Pinoteau with John Frankenheimer, but he shows a more than decent understanding of the creation of a fictional space that feels as if characters were actually moving through real spaces which is so important for scenes of chase and evasion. The director also makes effective use of urban as well as – rather attractive – rural locations, showing Ventura’s character isolated and alone, with the stiff back of somebody hunted, either dwarfed by empty spaces or caged in by people and architecture. In a clever move, the film doesn’t put any efforts into individualizing or characterising Tibère’s hunters, adding a paranoid layer by keeping them basically faceless and utterly impersonal.


The film’s also rather effective in the quieter moments when Tibère slowly and gravely re-discovers a half-buried past he had to work hard to forget once he found himself in the USSR. That Ventura is as utterly convincing in these scenes as he is running for his life hardly needs mention.