Henri Decoin wrote his first produced screenplay in 1925 and directed his first film (a short) in 1933 so by 1949 he was a very accomplished writer-director and lavished all his expertise on this very stylish film that's difficult to categorise; Louis Jouvet was playing his second policeman in two years (Quai des Orfevres, 1947) and in between he starred in another brilliant Decoin movie Les Amoureux sont seuls au monde. He had also recently appeared in a film where he had a doppleganger but instead of recasting the leading role in this film - which required Jouvet's police inspector to investigate the murder of his gangster double - Decoin chose to flaunt it via an opening sequence which more or less stands alone; a group of movie-goers leave a cinema where they have just seen Eddie Robinson play two lookalikes and even as they are scoffing they are confronted by not two but three identical lookalikes amongst themselves. This out of the way Decoin gets down to the main event; a gangster is murdered and his double is assigned to the case. In the first reel - ten minutes - Decoin lays more stylish noir (shadow/light, distorted angles etc) on us than Jacques Tourneur (rightly celebrated as a master of noir) put in the entire Build My Gallows High, and this is before we have met Madeleine Robinson. Throw in a fashion show where the creations are all named after low-key movies and which is itself disrupted by armed gangsters and you are looking at one hell of a movie. Put me down for seconds.
Review of Between Eleven and Midnight
