Very Cool!!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

"Le secret" was overshadowed by Robert Enrico's blockbuster "Le Vieux Fusil" released the following year.I have always thought that that movie -also featuring Noiret-was largely overrated."Le Secret" is a different matter:it's a return to mystery,irrational,and madness ,tendencies Enrico had displayed in his first(and best)work "Au Coeur de La Vie" (1963).It is far from being as stunning though.It's too long.In its first part,the story drags on and on.Fifteen minutes could have been easily edited out,the story would not have suffered for it.It was the time of paranoia in political movies.In the wake of "Conversation" and "The parallax view" lots of FRench directors jumped on the bandwagon.There was Jacques Deray and "Un Papillon sur l'Epaule" ;Yves Boisset and "Espion Lève-toi" ;Jean-Claude Tramont and "Le Point de Mire" ;and Robert Enrico and "Le Secret" .All those films deal with a huge conspiracy which may or may not exist.Enrico 's movies has good assets :his three leads are adequate ;a disturbing prologue (and a symmetrical epilogue);and characters who change : in the last third,we are not sure that Trintignant's paranoia or would be mythomania has not corrupted his "normal" companions.The military intervention complete with paratroopers and tanks is a bit too much but it adds to the offbeat atmosphere of the film and it reminds us of Enrico's anti-militarism (already obvious in "La Belle Vie" (1964))."Le Secret" is a flawed but interesting work.

"Le Secret," a French movie directed by Robert Enrico, stars Jean Louis Trintignant as a man who has stumbled accidentally upon a state "secret." We never find out exactly what it is, but it is something so awesome and so dangerous that the government first confines him to a mental ward and then hunts him down to eliminate him once he manages to escape. There are some shades of Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" here.After his escape the man is befriended by Philippe Noiret who plays a character of supernatural goodness reminiscent of his role in "The Clockmaker." Noiret and his less altruistic wife Marlène Jobert harbor and protect the man while they wonder whether he is telling them the truth or is indeed the killer which the authorities say is on the loose. Their uncertainty will cost them dearly.The movie is weakened by our never knowing what hideous truth the man has uncovered (a sort of unexplicated Hitchcockian 'MacGuffin') and by an overly oblique directorial style from the man who gave us the unforgettable "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." The principals, nevertheless, are uniformly excellent, and the shock ending managed to frighten me a great deal.

A mysterious prisoner goes on the run, claiming to hold a State secret putting his life in dangers. An innocent couple get caught up in his flight, and the series of adventures which follows. The tension builds to a crescendo and the sense of mystery prevails throughout this paranoiac thriller, in which the reason of State takes an implacable turn.

Under mysterious circumstances a strange guy (well played by Trintignant) escapes from some underground asylum. He finds refuge with a couple of fringe people of 68 who seemed to have retired to a tranquil life somwhere in the south of France. The strange visitor revives old dreams and memories and represents new opportunities to make something more out of life. The couple, superbly played by Philippe Noiret and Marlène Jobert, have each their own reasons to be interested and intrigued by the visitor. After a series of sometimes menacing, sometimes hylarious events, always impregnated with a subdued tension, the movie ends somewhere in the emptiness of some isolated beach.This is a very good movie. The images and the playing show a lot but also leave a lot to be guessed by the watcher. It makes a point (about Big Brother who is watching you) and is mysterious enough to remain full of tension.