[1] His career started with small roles in Frou-Frou (1955) and Un drôle de dimanche (1958), followed by playing Roger Hanin's son in Mon pote le gitan (1959).

The year before he had completed Subor's most important early role as Bruno Forestier, a French deserter in Geneva in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1960), set against terrorist acts in France and Switzerland during the guerre sans nom of the Algerian War.

[3] The critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Godard, in 1960, making a film about the Algerian War, was portraying the sort of intellectual and moral confusion that good men have when they confront senseless events.

"[4] In 2005 Jacques Mandelbaum described Subor in Le Monde as one of the greatest actors in French cinema, but said that his roles in the 1960s and 1970s were not "as favorable, ambiguous, fascinating as the Little Soldier.

Hitchcock changed Subor's role and let François Picard survive the assassination attempt from the novel, so he returns wounded ("I've been shot, just a little") into Claude Jade's arms.

[1] That year's renewal of Subor's career included a role in Claire Denis's Beau Travail, as a Foreign Legion captain named Bruno Forestier.