Ten Days' Wonder (1971)

Original title

La Décade prodigieuse

Directed by

Claude Chabrol

Genre

drama film, crime film

Country

France, Italy

Runtime

1h 50m

Rated

PG

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 31 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A detective investigates a series of strange events involving a wealthy family. He uncovers secrets and hidden desires beneath their pious exterior. The film explores the dark relationship between art and money.

cerebralunsettlingtensemelancholicvisually lushslow-burndarkly comicbleak

What happens

Ten Days' Wonder (French: La Décade prodigieuse) is a 1971 murder-mystery film directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Michel Piccoli, Anthony Perkins, Marlène Jobert and Orson Welles. It is based on the 1948 novel Ten Days' Wonder by Ellery Queen, with the detective renamed Paul Régis. It is the fourth film that Welles and Perkins appear in together after The Trial in 1962. Reviewing a revival of the film in 2018, Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker "… it’s a minor masterwork of freakazoidal cinema.… Chabrol orchestrates the grandiose theatrical tension with giddily audacious cinematography…. He reveals ravenous depravity beneath pious displays of benevolence and warns of the dangerous marriage of money and art." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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