I... comme Icare works perfectly well on first viewing for it gathers everything to make a fascinating conspiracy thriller. The President is killed, the (Warren>Heiniger) commission investigating the murder is unable to reach beyond the decoy sniper while one of its members, attorney Henri Volney (Yves Montand) is honest enough not to be satisfied with a quick and painless conclusion.
The script cleverly progresses with growing evidence of a conspiracy and Yves Montand makes it all stick together. Now this is on first viewing, because if you watch it a second time you're bound to see how little subtlety goes into the story. Basically you have this fine storyline detailing progressively a well-balanced set of evidences on the road to explain the State Conspiracy behind the Second Shooter theory. On the other hand the movie itself is poorly directed and has mediocre production values. Sure conspiracy movies always tried to render a "gritty documentary look", but there are details here that look badly amateurish in such a full-scale feature.
In the end I would say it comes down to Agatha Christie's "Whodunit" situation: everything looks good because you are doused into a very complicated murder only to be given a sudden shot at the solution. The pieces of evidence in the script are prompt to come in place and it just does not make sense that attorney Volney was that passive and submissive during the previous year of the Heiniger commission investigation. OK this sounds like "icebox logic", but in the continuity there is never a sense that the Volney investigation may sometimes be in a ditch: they always have a new clue to investigate and they even seem to quickly discard some important leads: Nick Farnese and the cop who 'mistakenly' kills a witness for instance.
Then the ending conveniently bundles together the last elements of the conspiracy. Cleverly crafted, sure, but this is far from an impressive experience: 'I... comme Icare' is mostly a long exposition with cheap suspense shots. Eventually the only thing people do remember is the 1961-63 Milgram experiment re-enactment, used here as a very conclusive point - in the script - about the decoy killer's motivation.
The script cleverly progresses with growing evidence of a conspiracy and Yves Montand makes it all stick together. Now this is on first viewing, because if you watch it a second time you're bound to see how little subtlety goes into the story. Basically you have this fine storyline detailing progressively a well-balanced set of evidences on the road to explain the State Conspiracy behind the Second Shooter theory. On the other hand the movie itself is poorly directed and has mediocre production values. Sure conspiracy movies always tried to render a "gritty documentary look", but there are details here that look badly amateurish in such a full-scale feature.
In the end I would say it comes down to Agatha Christie's "Whodunit" situation: everything looks good because you are doused into a very complicated murder only to be given a sudden shot at the solution. The pieces of evidence in the script are prompt to come in place and it just does not make sense that attorney Volney was that passive and submissive during the previous year of the Heiniger commission investigation. OK this sounds like "icebox logic", but in the continuity there is never a sense that the Volney investigation may sometimes be in a ditch: they always have a new clue to investigate and they even seem to quickly discard some important leads: Nick Farnese and the cop who 'mistakenly' kills a witness for instance.
Then the ending conveniently bundles together the last elements of the conspiracy. Cleverly crafted, sure, but this is far from an impressive experience: 'I... comme Icare' is mostly a long exposition with cheap suspense shots. Eventually the only thing people do remember is the 1961-63 Milgram experiment re-enactment, used here as a very conclusive point - in the script - about the decoy killer's motivation.