The best Michel Piccoli’s thriller movies

Enigmatic gangster Silien may or may not be responsible for informing on Faugel, who was just released from prison and is already involved in what should be a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

Naples: Raffaele, a cafe musician, is cajoled into performing a night-time serenade outside an apartment block. However, his mandolin playing is rudely interrupted by gunshots and a falling Jamaican man, who plummets from a window above. A camp character is also ejected from a window and Raffaele is compelled to conduct his own investigation. It transpires that a celebrated maestro, Victor Navarro is being blackmailed. Lucia, Navarro's attractive daughter-in-law, was present at each murder. The amateur detective is drawn to her and becomes embroiled in a mystery involving death threats and a macabre secret...

Sadiel, rebel leader in a North African state, takes refuge in Switzerland in the aftermath of a coup. Aware of the threat posed by Sadiel, the ruthless Colonel Kassar contacts the French security services to help in capturing the political activist. A police informer, Darien, is forced to lure Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to make a television coverage about the Third World. Arriving in Paris, Sadiel is captured and delivered to his opponents. Disgusted by the way he has been manipulated, Darien tries to turn back the clock, unknowing who’s dealing with.

The British send an American and a war hero to kidnap and hide an oil-country prince.

France, 1965. A man with many names, an exiled Spanish Communist in his forties, begins to accept the futility of his long struggle against the dictatorship of General Franco, who has suffocated his country with an iron hand since the end of the Civil War in 1939, when he learns that some of his comrades who work undercover in Spain are being cornered by the authorities. (Followed by “Roads to the South,” 1978.)

Two members of the French Academy agree to help the attractive young veterinarian Esther investigate the suspicious death of her sister. Esther is convinced her brother-in-law is responsible, but soon it becomes apparent that those responsible are linked to the very highest echelons of power in the Vatican.

A French resistance group liberates some German prisoners. Turns out one of them is a spy.

Lucienne Delamare and Pierre Maury are having an affair. Lucienne's husband Paul is the mayor, and a French deputy. Pierre's wife Clotilde has been weak and sickly for years. Lucienne's husband holds no excitement for her, and he is always away in Paris on business. Pierre is now the vice-mayor, thanks to Paul. Lucienne and Pierre have a secret meeting spot by a lake along a country lane. Pierre's wife dies suddenly, by suicide the town gossips believe. Pierre confesses otherwise to Lucienne. Paul proposes a shady land deal which will "benefit the town", and wants Pierre's political support and collusion. Then Paul discovers proof of his wife's affair...

Stephane, the wife of an older, prominent magistrate, coldbloodedly shoots a male visitor in her upscale home, then claims she was defending herself against a rapist. Victim turns out to be Wadek Aslanian, a gangster who's viewed as a modern-day Robin Hood. Paul, the lawyer hired by Stephane's husband, learns more than he really cares to know about his client, thanks to a series of anonymous letters. The notes provide a road map through the sordid areas of Stephane's past, allowing Paul to discover her history as an ex-prostitute, a porno movie performer -- and a frequent cohort of Aslanian. Naturally, Stephane's husband knows nothing about her past. Just as naturally , nothing that Paul discovers keeps him from falling in love with this mysterious woman.

Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight.

World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.