I... for Icarus · reception & legacy

How I... for Icarus has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A commercial hit in France in 1979 from a director critics often dismissed as merely 'commercial', it has since been reappraised as Henri Verneuil's masterpiece — the great French paranoid thriller that hardly anyone outside France has seen.

What's debated

Fans still argue over the long Milgram-experiment sequence: is stopping a conspiracy thriller dead for a psychology lecture the film's masterstroke or its most indulgent detour?

Its footprint

Its meticulous recreation of Stanley Milgram's obedience-to-authority experiment became the film's calling card — clipped, quoted and shown in classrooms in France, where the movie doubles as pop shorthand for JFK-style conspiracy paranoia.

Where it stands

A cult 'you must see this' deep cut — beloved by French cinephiles as the Gallic answer to the 70s American paranoid thriller, and a favourite Letterboxd discovery for Yves Montand and Morricone completists.