As I have said in my review of his film LES ESPIONS (THE SPIES, 1957), Henri-Georges Clouzot was the French Hitchcock, and every bit as brilliant in his way, but with more humour and human compassion. This classic film by Clouzot has so many Hitchcockian touches of suspense and irony that it shows the similarity of the two men probably more than any other Clouzot film. See also my review of another of his masterpieces, LE CORBEAU (THE CROW, 1943). Clouzot is best known today for his film THE WAGES OF FEAR (LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR, 1953, see my review), but I consider that an inferior work of his, unworthy of his talent. Sometimes he got a bit too carried away by 'the dark side'. We must also not forget his astonishing documentary portrait of Picasso, LE MYSTÈRE PICASSO (1956), which is possibly the most incredible film about a living painter ever made. The title of this film refers to the Paris Police Headquarters at 36 Quai des Orfèvres ('Quay of the Goldsmiths', because in the Middle Ages goldsmiths really did have their shops there), but the police do not even enter the story until more than half an hour has passed, as this is not really a detective film at all. The plot is so intricate and complex that it has less to do with whodunit than it has with Clouzot's main preoccupation in life, the deeper reaches of human psychology. The cast is universally excellent. Even tiny roles such as Joelle Bernard as Ginette (who sings beautifully, sitting in a chair with a fag in her mouth and a totally blank expression), Jeanne Fusier-Gir (1885-1973, veteran of 162 titles) as Pacquerette the coat lady at the Eden Theatre, and that of the old taxi driver Lafour played by Pierre Lauquey (1884-1962, veteran of an astounding 225 titles and one of France's most beloved character actors) are executed with perfection. Louis Jouvet, with his sad expression of a retired hound, lends a human face and a haunting and melancholy air to the inspector handling the murder case, the only love of his life being his sweet little boy who is 'the only thing I brought back from the Indies'. A great deal of this film was shot on location in Paris. One scene takes place at the famous restaurant Lapérouse at 51 Quai des Grands Augustins, the street where Picasso's studio still was at that date, I believe, and where Anatole France lived until his death. It is shocking to see the Postwar desolation of the Quai at that time (1946). The shop next door to the restaurant is vacant and for sale, and a few doors down one shop has its door blocked up with breeze blocks as if it had just been sealed by the Gestapo. Everywhere is hopelessly dingy and depressing, both outside and in. It is as if the German Army had left only minutes before. Clearly, Paris was not yet back on its feet by any means. In the film, everyone is wrapped up in overcoats indoors because of the lack of heating everywhere, and there is mention of having run out of coal for a small coal stove. People are seen wiping their armpits because of sweating too heavily under all their woollen jumpers. The star of the film is the overwhelmingly extrovert and cheeky Suzy Delair, who was Clouzot's live-in girlfriend. Words fail me; you have to see her to believe her in the role of Jenny Lamour. Her friend, the striking and brooding blonde Dora, played by Simone Renant, is secretly in love with her with 'a love that can never speak its name'. Jenny's husband Maurice is played by popular French actor Bernard Blier (a Gallic taste, less appealing to us perhaps, but then French men never come up to the standard of all those amazing French women, do they? And what do the French women see in them?). Much of the cinematic brilliance of this film is found in its moments of intense suspense. At one point, a murder address scribbled on a scrap of newspaper is picked up during an interview by the inspector and used to light his pipe. The pipe goes out and he uses it a second time. Meanwhile, the two people being interviewed are both in agonies of anxiety that he will glance at the paper and see the evidence. But he does not. Toscano's Gypsy Orchestra features in the film, and it plays the Gypsy tune 'Doina' extremely loud while the inspector is carrying out a particularly intense crime interview in the same room. This heightens the tension to an incredible degree. And there is one other occasion when Clouzot uses loud background noise to intensify suspense in the foreground. This may well be derived from Orson Welles's use of 'sound as confusion' techniques. The murder mystery in the film is a bizarre web of coincidences (such as an unexpected car theft taking place so that one of the suspects who has thus lost his mode of transport has to run frantically for 45 minutes to complete his alibi) and misunderstandings, but the film is really about the psychologies of the people involved in all of these complications. Clouzot wishes to explore why people do stupid things, how incompetent they really are, how vain many of their motives are, and how unexpected the ensuing events can become. None of the main protagonists in this film is really a bad person, but most of them are fools. The least demonstrative and most repressed character in the story, the secret lesbian, is the only one who is willing to make a sacrifice for another person or behave sensibly. The lonely and mournful inspector says to her late in the film: 'I have developed a sympathy for you. You and I have something in common. Neither of us has any chance of ever getting a woman.'
Review of Jenny Lamour
