The title of this film can be translated as bringing things to a head and although he had fourteen further films in him purists would argue that Henri Decoin's career had already come to a head by the mid-fifties. He was certainly at his peak in the late thirties and early forties and still capable of turning out quality product into the fifties but then he was still - on occasion - working with his ex-wife Danielle Darrieux in that decade. Purists may also argue that Decoin was not really at home dealing with gun-runners which is just about all the plot in this case. Raymond Pellegrin is an unsatisfactory protagonist and Peter Van Eyck a bit on the cardboard side of oak as the principal heavy. Heavy hitters Charles Vanel and Lino Ventura don't appear for about four reels and the film shows its age in the sequence where Ventura's flics are tape recording Vanel's statement in another room and subsequently 'edit' the tape so that when they play it back to Van Eyck over the telephone it sends a totally false message. I'm a great admirer of Decoin, especially in the films he made with Darrieux, some of the finest in French cinema, and not prepared to write him off totally whilst conceding that this effort is far from his best.
Review of Le feu aux poudres
