The Strangler

Director: Paul Vecchiali, Paul Vecchiali, Paul Vecchiali

1970 / 93min / DCP

Vecchiali’s third feature and first masterpiece, The Strangler was produced not by him but by its star, Jacques Perrin—perhaps best known as the love-struck sailor of Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort. In one of the most idiosyncratic serial killer films ever made, he here plays a traumatized young man set on helping old ladies out of their misery, and obsessively hounded by Julien Guiomar’s almost equally odd detective. Vecchiali takes this purposefully perverse premise and invests every turn and sweep of his dynamic camerawork with poetry, stylistic verve and, most characteristically of all, intense empathy, generosity and love.” —Series curators Bingham Bryant and Graham Carter

Restored with the help of Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC)