After his shocking masterpiece LE CORBEAU was denounced by both the Gestapo AND the Resistance (who felt its negative portrait of the French was pro-German; and they did have such a wonderful war), Clouzot was suspended from film-making activities for three years. If it was expected on his return that Clouzot would try to 'atone' for his bleakness with more reassuring fare, than people didn't know him. QUAI DES ORFEVRES seems an easier pill to swallow than its predecessor - the brooding Expressionism of LE CORBEAU is more restrained here; the characters are nicer; there is even a bright, happy ending set at Christmas, time of rebirth, renewal, redemption - then it's just as hard to digest.
Although billed as a Louis Jouvet film, the great theatrical innovator who plays the bluff detective, the first third concentrates solely on the build up to the crime, and is a wonderful insight into the theatre and domesiticity. Jenny Lamour is a singer determined to make it big in the music hall. This, of course, means pursuing dubious contacts, inflaming the insane jealousy of her timid, balding, accompanist husband, Maurice Martineau.
The more successful Jenny becomes, the more elderly gentlemen friends push themselves in her interests. One in particular, an odious, wizened, lecherous old goat keeps inviting her to restaurants and his huge town mansion. Exasperated, Maurice storms into his booth and threatens to kill him. One night, his wife goes off to meet him anyway. Armed with a pistol, he goes to the lecher's mansion, only to find signs of a struggle and the man's corpse.
Made during the great cycle of Hollywood noirs, ORFEVRES departs from its more famous counterpart in a number of ways. There is no chic fatalism here: the working class background roots the characters in genuine social problems, rather than some vague existential trauma - Jenny's urge to make it as a star is as much an attempt to escape poverty and paralysis as it is to court attention, while Maurice's conservatoire training has only kept him down as a virtual menial. This complex mixture of class and gender relations is uniquely European.
So when Clouzot overlays the screen with bars - on windows, doors, stairs, grates etc. - he is not using an overused trope suggesting metaphysical claustrophobia, but showing how his characters' lives are a literal prison, partly through chance, which is why we have a thriller, but also by a circumstance that means Jenny has to virtually prostitute herself to raise her station. The film, then, concentrates less on the thriller mechanics (which are still exciting) than on the plot's effect on two ordinary people way out of their depths, one driven to despair. When, at the end, amid the bright lighting and festive japery, Clouzot frames his couple through a frighteningly tangible set of bars, as well as sadistically (if comically) interrupting their idyll, we feel a chill.
In keeping with the French crime tradition, Clouzot's surface realism is subverted at every point. The dingy flats, the packed, smoky nightclubs, with their lecherous men and disapproving women, all bespeak authenticity. But the theatrical setting gives the movie a playful feel, as if people are playing a role, nobody being quite what they seem. The film frequently breaks for musical interruptions as if the whole thing is a show. The importance of mirrors, especially when Maurice comes to the nightclub on the night of the murder, seems transformative, as in a fantasy, an entry into a mirroring, but alternative universe, as well as revealing the fragmentation of characters torn between desire and reality. Clouzot's strange, alienating editing in moments of high realism confirms this. This is not to minimise the characters' trauma, or the seriousness of the film - Clouzot just asks us not to accept the surface of the film too passively.
For a supposed misanthrope, Clouzot was always a great director of actors, and he has three of the best here - Suzy Delair offers a vibrant vulgarity rarely seen in elegant French cinema; the incomparable Louis Jouvet suggest the perversion and sadism behind his gruff, decent Inspector. Bernard Blier, through, is a revelation - sweaty, blank, passionate, a 40s Monsieur Hire; his continual buffeting in this film, from envy to despair, is painful to watch.
Although billed as a Louis Jouvet film, the great theatrical innovator who plays the bluff detective, the first third concentrates solely on the build up to the crime, and is a wonderful insight into the theatre and domesiticity. Jenny Lamour is a singer determined to make it big in the music hall. This, of course, means pursuing dubious contacts, inflaming the insane jealousy of her timid, balding, accompanist husband, Maurice Martineau.
The more successful Jenny becomes, the more elderly gentlemen friends push themselves in her interests. One in particular, an odious, wizened, lecherous old goat keeps inviting her to restaurants and his huge town mansion. Exasperated, Maurice storms into his booth and threatens to kill him. One night, his wife goes off to meet him anyway. Armed with a pistol, he goes to the lecher's mansion, only to find signs of a struggle and the man's corpse.
Made during the great cycle of Hollywood noirs, ORFEVRES departs from its more famous counterpart in a number of ways. There is no chic fatalism here: the working class background roots the characters in genuine social problems, rather than some vague existential trauma - Jenny's urge to make it as a star is as much an attempt to escape poverty and paralysis as it is to court attention, while Maurice's conservatoire training has only kept him down as a virtual menial. This complex mixture of class and gender relations is uniquely European.
So when Clouzot overlays the screen with bars - on windows, doors, stairs, grates etc. - he is not using an overused trope suggesting metaphysical claustrophobia, but showing how his characters' lives are a literal prison, partly through chance, which is why we have a thriller, but also by a circumstance that means Jenny has to virtually prostitute herself to raise her station. The film, then, concentrates less on the thriller mechanics (which are still exciting) than on the plot's effect on two ordinary people way out of their depths, one driven to despair. When, at the end, amid the bright lighting and festive japery, Clouzot frames his couple through a frighteningly tangible set of bars, as well as sadistically (if comically) interrupting their idyll, we feel a chill.
In keeping with the French crime tradition, Clouzot's surface realism is subverted at every point. The dingy flats, the packed, smoky nightclubs, with their lecherous men and disapproving women, all bespeak authenticity. But the theatrical setting gives the movie a playful feel, as if people are playing a role, nobody being quite what they seem. The film frequently breaks for musical interruptions as if the whole thing is a show. The importance of mirrors, especially when Maurice comes to the nightclub on the night of the murder, seems transformative, as in a fantasy, an entry into a mirroring, but alternative universe, as well as revealing the fragmentation of characters torn between desire and reality. Clouzot's strange, alienating editing in moments of high realism confirms this. This is not to minimise the characters' trauma, or the seriousness of the film - Clouzot just asks us not to accept the surface of the film too passively.
For a supposed misanthrope, Clouzot was always a great director of actors, and he has three of the best here - Suzy Delair offers a vibrant vulgarity rarely seen in elegant French cinema; the incomparable Louis Jouvet suggest the perversion and sadism behind his gruff, decent Inspector. Bernard Blier, through, is a revelation - sweaty, blank, passionate, a 40s Monsieur Hire; his continual buffeting in this film, from envy to despair, is painful to watch.