Julien (Ronet) has a plan to murder his boss, an unsympathetic but powerful arms dealer, in a scheme hatched with the boss’ wife Florence (Moreau), with whom Julien has been having an affair. He has concocted the so-called perfect crime with an arrangement to make the deed look like suicide, and then meet Florence in a pre-arranged rendezvous.

But perfect crimes go wrong. Malle, working from a screenplay that he wrote with Roger Nimier based on a novel by Noël Calef, piles on one mishap after another and even includes a co-incidental crime by two others as circumstances tighten and a police inspector, played by the reliable Lino Ventura, gets hot on the trail.

The story unfolds with simplicity and economy and keeps us on edge. It demonstrates how a tale cleanly told without the flamboyance that characterizes so much work today can be far more effective. The film is greatly enhanced and energized with a score by Miles Davis that adds to the intensity.