By Fred Blosser
Scores
of modestly budgeted, black-and-white Noir movies about gangsters, cops,
private eyes, and murderous love affairs were produced in France in the 1950s,
but only a few crossed the Atlantic in dubbed prints. Some were dumped in second-run movie houses,
where they were often labeled and advertised “for adults only,” emphasising
their sexual content (tame now but steamy back then, when TV routinely depicted
married couples in separate beds). I
discussed one such Noir, released in France in 1959 as “Du Rififi Chez Les
Femmes” and in the U.S. in 1962 as “Riff Raff Girls,” HERE. In the later ‘60s, others were bundled with
other foreign B-movies for broadcast on local television stations, hardly a
prestigious showcase either. Coming off
the midnight shift, a bleary-eyed factory worker might see the end of an Eddie
Constantine movie with mediocre dubbing in a late-nite time slot, just before
the station signed off for the night. With a mug that looked like a bad night on the town, Eddie was even more
popular than Humphrey Bogart in the France of the Charles De Gaulle era, but
his tough-guy pictures as wisecracking, two-fisted FBI agent Lemmy Caution
hardly made a ripple here. To the extent
Constantine and Caution are remembered in the U.S. at all, it’s because Eddie
reprised the role in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville” (1965). But “Alphaville,” although wonderful, was a
New Wave absurdist parody and not part of the original series.
Only
with the advent of home video and social media since the 1990s have films like
“Touchez Pas au Grisbi” (1954), “Bob Le Flambeur” (1956), “Any Number Can Win”
(1963), and “Le Circle Rouge” (1970) been rescued from obscurity, packaged with
care, and re-evaluated by a modern, more receptive audience. With many more pictures of this type yet to
be rediscovered and restored, the release of “French Noir Collection” on
Blu-ray is a step in the right direction. The Kino Lorber Studio Classics set includes three dramas that will be
new to all but the most tenacious fans of the genre.
In
“Speaking of Murder” (1957), Louis Bertain (Jean Gabin) seems to be a stolid,
middle-aged Parisian whose garage caters to high-end customers. The appearance is deceiving. Louis, an ambitious high roller, needs more
money than the garage earns. He makes it
as the leader of a four-man theft ring, targeting deliveries of cash and
securities at banks. The robberies are
grab-and-run jobs, based on insider tips about delivery schedules, and
carefully planned with the exacting attention to detail that fans expect from
stories like this about heists. Louis
and his partners Fredo, Pepito, and Raymond have been together for more than
ten years, but fractures have begun to appear. The volatile Pepito (Lino Ventura) distrusts Fredo, who developed a bad
case of the shakes on their last job. Worse, Pepito also has suspicious
eyes on Louis’ younger brother, Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi), a petty offender
vulnerable to police pressure. For good
measure, Louis is determined to retire after the next job, and we know how that
usually turns out in gangster pictures. With a sliced-to-the-bone plot and almost documentarian black-and-white
cinematography on the streets of Paris, the film is as good as the genre gets,
even if it is saddled with a lacklustre title, apparently tacked on for release
in English-speaking markets back in the day. “Speaking of Murder’ would lead you to expect a sedate episode of “Columbo”
or “Murder,
She Wrote,” not a hardboiled heist drama like this one. The original French title, “Le Rouge Est Mis,” or “The Red Is On” (referring
to the light that comes on outside Louis’ garage when the gang meets there)
isn’t any more compelling in direct translation. If Marcel Bozzuffi looks familiar, you
probably remember his later role in a much more famous crime drama. In “The French Connection” (1971), the
prolific French actor played Pierre Nicoli or “Frog Two,” the sniper who flees
from Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s iconic car and train
chase.
The
other two films in the Kino Lorber set follow the pattern of James M. Cain’s
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity,” in which murder
results when one spouse cheats on another with an extramarital lover. In “Back to the Wall” (original title, “Le
Dos au Mur,” 1958), Jacques (Gerard Oury), a wealthy construction tycoon,
discovers that his wife Gloria (Jeanne Moreau) has resumed an old affair with
Yves, a small-time actor. The vengeful
millionaire assumes a false identity to blackmail the lovers and humiliate his
errant wife. He doesn’t need the
blackmail payments; he just wants to see her squirm. It isn’t a spoiler to note that Yves is
murdered in the course of the scheme, since the film opens with Jacques
disposing of his body. We presume that
the millionaire was the murderer, but if so, how does that square with his
extortion game, once it begins to unfold in a long back story we follow through
Jacques’ eyes? In “Witness in the City”
(“Un Témoin Dans La Ville,” 1959), another millionaire, Pierre, kills his
mistress Jeanne by throwing her off a moving train. In turn, Jeanne’s husband Ancelin (Lino
Ventura again—the Roy Scheider of French crime pictures) murders Pierre after
the millionaire is acquitted in court for Jeanne’s death. Ancelin thinks he’s committed the perfect
crime when he makes Pierre’s death scene look like a suicide instead of a
murder, but as someone tells him, “No crime is perfect.” Ancelin becomes desperate when a cab driver
sees him outside Pierre’s house, just before the dead man’s body is found. Since the driver was a witness, Ancelin
decides he has to get rid of him too. The film reaches for the tension of an Alfred Hitchcock or Fritz Lang
picture as Ancelin stalks the cabby, but doesn’t quite succeed; but then,
nobody ever quite matched Hitchcock or Lang. Still, both it and “Back to the Wall” will be welcomed by suspense fans
in search of obscure works in the genre, and both benefit from glistening
nighttime scenes in actual Parisian locations. Nostalgists will enjoy the wet streets and neon at actual locations, the
Midcentury interiors, trenchcoats—plenty of trenchcoats—and classic product
placements in all three films. When was
the last time, if ever, you saw an Esso sign?
The
three movies, licensed from Gaumont Films, are presented in sharp, restored
prints, with French voice tracks and crisp English subtitles. One of the two discs in the set contains
“Speaking of Murder” alone, and the second contains the other two films. Trailers for “Speaking of Murder” and “Back
to the Wall” are included. The Blu-ray
can be ordered HERE.
Now,
when can we see a Lemmy Caution Collection of comparable quality?
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)