Code Name: Tiger

Directed by Claude Chabrol, this 1964 French-Italian co-production was conceived as a French answer to the worldwide James Bond craze. Roger Hanin plays secret agent Louis Rapière, who operates under the code name 'The Tiger', and Hanin also had a hand in the screenplay. The film makes its Bond connection explicit: its female lead, Daniela Bianchi, had starred the previous year in From Russia with Love, and one scene even shows the cover of Ian Fleming's novel bearing Sean Connery's image. Considered a typical product of the Eurospy wave, the roughly ninety-minute picture follows its hero through a dangerous espionage mission. Its reception was strong enough to spawn a 1965 sequel, Le tigre se parfume à la dynamite, briefly turning Rapière's adventures into a series.