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Frantic

Frantic

Movie · 1988 · 15 people

Roman Polanski directed Frantic, an American-French neo-noir thriller from 1988 that mixes crime, mystery and espionage. A Warner Bros. film, it runs about 120 minutes in English and French. It failed at the box office but won over critics and has since become a cult favourite, and Ennio Morricone's score is hailed as one of his best.

The story is set in Paris. Richard Walker, an American doctor, comes to the city with his wife Sondra for a medical conference; after the luggage gets mixed up, she mysteriously disappears. With police and officials uninterested, Walker searches alone. The clues in the wrong suitcase lead him into the Paris underworld, where an uneasy partnership with Michelle, a young, street-smart woman caught up in the mix-up, pulls the two into a web of smuggling and international intrigue. Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner star, and Seigner soon became the director's wife. The cast also includes Betty Buckley, John Mahoney, Yorgos Voyagis, David Huddleston, Dominique Pinon and Alexandra Stewart.

Polanski wrote the script with Gérard Brach and Robert Towne, and Thom Mount produced. The score is styled after Bernard Herrmann's music for Alfred Hitchcock's films, and Grace Jones's song "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" is heard several times.

DirectorRoman Polanski
Production companyWarner Bros.

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Cast

Only cast members with a profile on this site are listed.

Alexandra Stewart Alexandra Stewart Film actor · 87 years old Yves Rénier Yves Rénier Film actor · died at 78 Harrison Ford Betty Buckley John Mahoney Emmanuelle Seigner Yorgo Voyagis David Huddleston Dominique Pinon Alain Doutey Artus de Penguern Gérard Klein Jacques Ciron Jean-Pierre Delage Laurent Spielvogel

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Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Polanski brings Hitchcock's ordinary-man-in-the-wrong-place template to Paris, and Morricone's Bernard Herrmann-style score underlines the link on purpose. The suspense comes less from big events than from a foreigner left alone, in a city whose rules he doesn't know, by uninterested officials; a subtler source than the genre's mechanical tricks. Spinning a whole web of intrigue out of a small mishap like a mixed-up suitcase is a classic idea, but handled well. Even so, the film runs long for a search story of this kind, and the pace risks sagging at times. That it failed at the box office yet won critics over may well have to do with exactly this structure, which demands patience.

Action & Thriller Fan Puts pace, tension and set pieces first; little patience for slow drama.

A missing wife, a mixed-up suitcase, the Paris underworld and smuggling: plenty of ingredients, but Frantic is not an action film; it is a patient thriller. Harrison Ford here is less a hero who punches his way through than an ordinary doctor backed into a corner. If you want a fast pace it may feel slow; if you enjoy suspense built step by step, it pays off.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

Frantic is about the loneliness of a man whom institutions turn their backs on in a foreign city. The indifference of both the police and the American officials shows how cold bureaucracy can be in the face of a personal disaster; Walker carrying on the search alone is not a choice but a necessity. The underworld behind postcard Paris and the life of street-smart Michelle form a sharp contrast with the world of a respectable doctor in town for a medical conference. The film makes clever use of this meeting of classes and worlds within the conventions of the genre.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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