The Pelican (1974)

Blain’s moving portrait of paternal love focuses on jazz musician and new father Paul (Blain), who lands in prison for an illegal scheme undertaken to satisfy his wife’s upwardly-mobile yearnings. Released many years later, Paul discovers that his ex- has remarried to a wealthy man, and begins spying on the new family at their luxurious summer house in Switzerland, hoping to one day reunite with his young son. “Using a minimum of means with a maximum of precision, [Blain’s] portrait of Paul’s obsessive desperation in the face of inevitability emerges with shattering clarity,”—Christoph Huber.