THE STORY: Jan Van Rooyen (Hardy Kruger), a Dutch painter, stops to buy a bunch of violets on a London street as he hurries to keep a rendezvous with a woman. But Jacqueline Cousteau (Micheline Presle) is not waiting for him in the fashionable apartment to which he goes. Instead, shortly after his arrival he is confronted by Detective Inspector Morgan (Stanley Baker), who accuses him of murder. Jacqueline's body has been found in the vestibule of the house, and according to the police doctor she was killed after the time Van Rooyen, by his own admission, entered the apartment. Morgan, a tough, efficient policeman, listens sceptically to Van Rooyen's denials. Incredulously, the young man realizes that the circumstantial evidence against him is overwhelming. COMMENT: Although it certainly sounds intriguing, the plot isn't much. It's mildly intriguing, but the solution is obvious once the central idea — borrowed from Vera Caspary's Laura — is introduced. Losey has tried to work up some interest. Most of the first half of the film is played in dark shadows and all the players work hard to give their characters credibility, but all they have really done is to make the little asides (Police Sergeant explaining to the suspect what he thinks is wrong with the police recruitment advertising, and all the business with the old school tie) more interesting than the main plot and thus to show up its inadequacy to sustain a film of this length.

BLIND DATE starts out hampered by a misleading title and the miscasting of the key female role. The meeting in the Tate Gallery between penniless Dutch painter Hardy Kruger and French bourgeoise Micheline Presle is no blind date, but, superficially at least, a simple pick-up - the "chance meeting" of the film's US title. As for Presle, her advances to Kruger appear gauche, even desperate, with none of the allure that would be needed to snare him. A better actress might have accepted that her character would, in that situation, appear clumsy, and play on that, but Presle lets the lines do the work. The film only picks up with the appearance of Losey's preferred male lead, Stanley Baker, as the detective Morgan. With a broad Welsh accent, and troubled by a cold that has him sniffing repeatedly on an inhaler, Baker sketches out the role he would play with increasing assurance in later collaborations with Losey like HELL IS A CITY, EVA and ACCIDENT - a working-class outsider, in revolt against the elite of which he secretly wishes to be part, but which he knows will never accept him. Any strength in BLIND DATE resides in the confrontations between a disheveled, snuffling Baker and the Scotland Yard establishment, represented by three-piece-suited Robert Flemyng and his equally suave subordinate, John van Eyssen. By stressing that Morgan's father was a chauffeur and Kruger's a miner, Losey decisively places both on the opposite side of the social divide from these two, not to mention the awkward, chilly Presle. In a brief but significant scene, Flemyng, having hinted to Baker, none too subtly, that he should frame Kruger if he ever wants promotion, encounters van Eyssen in the corridor and reminds him they'll be meeting socially over the weekend. By contrast, Kruger and Baker languish in the cultural ghetto with losers like Gordon Jackson's PC Plod and Jack McGowran's furtive "nudge-nudge-wink-wink-know-what-I-mean?" postman. The film hammers home this point with its set design, in particular that of Baker's office, a draughty attic with exposed waste-pipes running down the wall. The office, along with Baker's clothing, advertises the fact that, by exposing the real murderer, he has incurred permanent banishment from the circles of power. Losey's supposedly socialist principles are seldom apparent in his films, which are mainly calculated exercises in style, but in BLIND DATE at least he appears to pin his left-wing colours to Baker's crumpled sleeve.

For French star Micheline Presle this movie must have emitted the faint aroma of deja vu; twelve years before she had starred in a French classic Le Diable au corps (Devil In The Flesh) in which she was the love object of a much younger man, as is the case here, but there the comparison ends. Le Diable au corps reeked Class, from the writers, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, through the director, Claude Autant-Lara, to Presle's co-star, Gerard Philipe; match that with their equivalents here and it's not even funny, we're talking Bush League and/or Second Eleven depending on whether you take your metaphors from baseball or cricket. I suppose the likes of Stanley Baker, Hardy Kruger, Gordon Jackson etc, do their best but alas, their best is light years away from the best of Aurenche, Autant-Lara and Philipe. One to see only for Presle, a class act in whatever language.

This is basically a mystery story, but the mystery itself and its solution are not very satisfying. The best is that in the mean time we get to see some character study. And Losey's mise-en-scene is above average, as usual.