Avec la peau des autres (1966)

A French intelligence officer, Pascal Fabre (Lino Ventura), is sent on a mission to Vienna, Austria, to bring back to Paris the head of the local network, a man named Paul Margery (Jean Bouise), nicknamed “the Lame One.” Margery is suspected by his superiors of having become a double agent. Fabre was chosen because he is an old friend of the suspect; he is initially tasked, “in a personal capacity,” with re-establishing contact with him and understanding the situation. On the very evening Fabre arrives in the Austrian capital, the agent assigned to act as an intermediary between the two men is killed in a highly suspicious accident. As Fabre waits for Margery in a café, Margery calls to urge him to leave immediately. Fabre realizes the affair is more serious and more complicated than expected. Searching Vienna, he eventually discovers Margery’s hideout, where unknown men are holding him captive and searching the apartment from top to bottom. Fabre kills the two men and frees his friend. Margery confesses that he is being relentlessly pursued by a man named Chalieff (Wolfgang Preiss) and the mysterious organization he heads. He insists that he has never betrayed anyone and is not a double agent, but tells Fabre that he has decided to leave the service and disappear. However, he withholds one essential detail: before leaving, he is still waiting for the delivery of sensitive files that will enable him to negotiate his retirement. When Margery is himself kidnapped, the situation becomes even more complicated. As Fabre follows the leads, he discovers other networks, unexpected complicity, and an information-trafficking operation in which French intelligence services, rival organizations, and private interests are entangled, against the backdrop of an East-West confrontation in a Vienna that has once again become a “nest of spies” in peacetime.