10:30 P.M. Summer

Hollywood blacklisted director Jules Dassin in the early 1950s, and he was unable to find work even in Europe before making the 1955 French heist classic Rififi. After the success of that film, Dassin met actress Melina Mercouri, and together they made some of the most flamboyantly terrible films of the day. One of them was 1966’s 10:30 P.M. Summer, a Marguerite Duras adaptation about a couple’s infidelity while on holiday in Spain. Stopping in a small village, the wife (Mercouri) becomes obsessed with a crime-of-passion killer, while her husband and her friend (Peter Finch and Romy Schneider, wasted) have an affair. 10:30 P.M. Summer starts well and features some beautiful Spanish location shots, but it quickly turns from an overheated melodrama into a ludicrously pretentious melodrama.