AllMovie

Claude Chabrol reportedly wanted to film Ellery Queen's mystery novel Ten Days' Wonder for years. With regard to this, it is very surprising that this adaptation comes across as so muddled and unconvincing, replete with Freudian archetypes and portentous religious symbolism. It's further undermined by Orson Welles' grandiloquent performance as a wealthy patriarch playing God and an ending that pays a bizarre tribute to Welles' own Citizen Kane. After Psycho, casting Anthony Perkins as a troubled young man had become quite a cliché, so his feverish performance here looks almost like a parody. Marlène Jobert is touching as the guilt-ridden Helene and Michel Piccoli is reliable as the Ellery Queen character (named Paul Régis in the film). However, both the characters and the actors portraying them suffer from the movie's stilted dialogue. Jean Rabier's cinematography conveys fairly well the decadent atmosphere of the proceedings, so do the gaudily stylized sets by Guy Maugin and costumes by famous fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. As with many European co-productions of that period, Ten Days' Wonder's soundtrack was post-synchronized and the poor quality of English dubbing further adds to the woes of the film.