User Reviews

Quai des Orfèvres is directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Clouzot co-writes the screenplay with Jean Ferry. It is based on the novel Legitime defense written by Stanislas-André Steeman . it stars Louis Jouvet, Suzy Delair, Bernard Blier and Simone Renant. Music is by Francis Lopez and cinematography by Armand Thirard.

When high profile business man Georges Brignon is found murdered all evidence points to jealous husband Maurice Martineau - Inspector Antoine takes up the case.

Following the backlash and fallout from Le Corbeau in 1943, Henri-Georges Clouzot wasn't allowed to make a film for four years, his return brought about Quai des Orfevres. Although a highly respected master of his craft, Clouzot was frowned upon for the dark approach to human nature in some of his films, whilst his treatment of the actors under his direction is legendary in a bad way. So how interesting to find that his comeback picture is actually one of his most accessible, very much thriving on human interest factors for literally everyone in the picture!

This a traditional police who done it procedural in core essence, one that does come with coincidences and contrivances, and yet the characters are so richly drawn, their lives so compelling, that the simplicity of plot is actually irrelevant. We are in post war Paris and the back drop is the world of theatre and nightclubs. Clouzot offers up in the fist instance some film noir staples, a possible femme fatale, gay love from afar, cuckold husband and a grotesque murder victim. Even the acts on the stage have a weirdness to them, Wheeling Winos - one with a paper mache head! Dogs that walk on their hind legs! How wonderful. The clubs are smoky, the streets dimly lighted for menacing atmosphere, Clouzot and Thirard have created a splendid moody world from which to spin the tale.

I'll take him for a ride, and what a ride!

Pitched at the front is Jenny Lamour (Delair), who is not beyond using her sexuality to further her stage career, which of course doesn't sit well with her highly jealous husband Maurice (Blier), a man clearly punching above his weight with Jenny. Ah but Clouzot is a crafty devil, he has let us into a secret that undermines us the viewer's expectations and that of Maurice. This keeps the question of who is the murderer - and the motive - as a constant intrigue. There's little slices of sexy sauce to tantalise, and the whole play developes into a sort of tragic comedy, but always the characterisations of the key players are earthy and dealing in foibles. Then Inspector Antoine (Jouvet excellent) holds court, a grumpy but stoically deceptive man of his work, film noir has itself another policeman of note.

Visually there's some treats, such as the dark shadowy walk that Maurice takes to Villa St Marceaux, arriving at the house which instantly looks like a noir nightmare. Better still is a sequence as we get towards the denouement, Maurice in a holding pen, a sexy lady in the pen next door, as bells ring out she is framed in shadowed bars whilst Maurice's mind begins to fracture. The craft on show is sublime at times, visually and on the page. I'm not over enamoured with Delair as an actress, but conversely Renant is quality and gorgeous into the bargain, while I think the ending should have really gone into black hearted territory. All told though, and this is Clouzot's least suspenseful film that I have seen, this is well worthy of time investment for lovers of classic French cinema. 7.5/10

H.G. Cluozot had difficulties working in France after he had made "Le Corbeau" in 1943 which was produced by the German company and later judged by French as a piece of anti-French propaganda. Louis Jouvet, an admirer of Clouzot's work, invited him to direct a thriller "Quai des Orfevres" where he played an ambiguous police inspector investigating a murder that happened in Paris Music Hall. Without each other knowledge, the seductive cabaret singer Jenny Lamoure (Suzy Delair) and her jealous piano-accompanist husband Maurice who is madly in love with her (Bertrand Blier, father of director Bertrand Blier) trying to cover up (without each other's knowledge) what they believe to be their involvement in the murder? Enters tenacious policeman (Louis Jouvet) who is determined to discover the truth. Jouvet practically stole the movie with wonderfully cynic and sentimental in the same time performance. "His character, his eagle-like profile and his unique way of speaking made him unforgettable." "Quai des Orfevres", witty and atmospheric observation of human weaknesses was a great comeback of H.G. Cluozot, the fine director, "French Hitchcock".

"Quai des Orfevres", directed by the brilliant Henri-Georges Clouzot, is a film to treasure because it is one of the best exponents of French film making of the postwar years. M. Clouzot, adapting the Steeman's novel, "Longtime Defence", shows his genius in the way he sets the story and in the way he interconnects all the characters in this deeply satisfying movie that, as DBDumonteil has pointed out in this forum, it demonstrates how influential Cluzot was and how much the next generation of French movie makers are indebted to the master, especially Claude Chabrol.

The crisp black and white cinematography by Armand Thirard has been magnificently transferred to the Criterion DVD we recently watched. Working with Clouzot, Thirard makes the most of the dark tones and the shadows in most of the key scenes. The music by Francis Lopez, a man who created light music and operettas in France, works well in the context of the film, since the action takes place in the world of the music halls and night clubs.

Louis Jouvet, who is seen as a police detective, is perfect in the part. This was one of his best screen appearances for an actor who was a pillar of the French theater. Jouvet clearly understood well the mechanics for the creation of his police inspector who is wiser and can look deeply into the souls of his suspects and ultimately steals the show from the others. In an unfair comment by someone in this page, Jouvet's inspector is compared with Peter Falk's Columbo, the television detective. Frankly, and no disrespect to Mr. Falk intended, it's like comparing a great champagne to a good house wine.

Bernard Blier is perfect as the jealous husband. Blier had the kind of face that one could associate with the man consumed with the passion his wife Jenny Lamour has awakened in him. Martineau is vulnerable and doesn't act rationally; he is an easy suspect because he has done everything wrong as he finds in the middle of a crime he didn't commit, but all the evidence points to the contrary.

The other great character in the film is Dora, the photographer. It's clear by the way she interacts with Jenny where her real interest lies. Simone Renant is tragically appealing as this troubled woman and makes an enormous contribution to the film. Suzy Delair, playing Jenny, is appealing as the singer who suddenly leaps from obscurity to celebrity and attracts the kind of men like Brignon, the old lecher.

The film is one of the best Clouzot directed during his distinguished career and one that will live forever because the way he brought all the elements together.

First of all,there is a detective story:"légitime défense" by Belgian Stanislas André Steeman whose "l'assassin habite au 21" Clouzot had already transferred to the screen in 1942,with Pierre Fresnay and the same actress Suzy Delair.Steeman complained about Clouzot's adaptation for both movies.The movie from 1942 was excellent,but the "detective story" side had been kept,so why complaining?As for "Quai des orfèvres",Clouzot was now in a new phase of his brilliant career.After having directed "le corbeau" and been blacklisted,he had a lot more to say than a simple whodunit.Steeman complained essentially about the poor detective ending,which I will not reveal of course,but Clouzot focused on the social vignettes,on his characters's psychology,and he did not give a damn about the puzzle à la Agatha Christie.By doing so,he becomes the genuine predecessor of CLaude Chabrol who has always been closer to him than to Alfred Hitchcock whom he admires much though. Suzy Delair has great screen presence,and you will love the song she really sings(she was a singer too)"avec son tralala".Bernard Blier gives ,as ever,a sparing of gestures and words performance,and he really pulls it off .Two characters are particularly interesting and disturbing:the first one,Dora,the photographer:she takes pictures of female models ,and Clouzot,by subtle touches,reveals us she's a lesbian.Of course,the word is never uttered(How could it be in 1947?) The police chief (fabulous Louis Jouvet) tells her:"You and me,WE are not lucky with women."The portrait of this cop is very detailed:we learn a lot of things about him,not necessarily connected with the Delair/Blier plot:he's a widower ,with a son he adores and who runs into school difficulties,particularly in geometry.So we get to know all the characters in depth.One of the most important manifesto of post-war French cinema.

The extraordinarily adorable Suzy Delair plays a statuesque performer obsessed with succeeding in the theater. Her husband and accompanist, played by Bernard Blier, is a composed but jealous man. When he finds out in a less than preferable way that his flashy wife has planned a rendezvous with a lecherous old businessman with the intention of advancing her career, he loses all control and threatens the businessman with murder. Now, at that point, I must stop describing the film to you because it skates on such thin ice with its twists, revelations, ambiguities and suspense that to imply any of it would endanger it. I am not sure how good or bad that is for this French police procedural emanating from the song- and-dance community, though it is certainly interesting that what we do know throughout is who did not do it. We just don't know who did.

The story depends upon the procedure of following clues, where ideal alibis fail and where cautiously created fabrications and deceptions disintegrate. Interestingly, this is a suspense film in which suspense is generated in spite of the knowledge one would traditionally think too much too soon.

Quay of the Goldsmiths is the least dark of Henri-Georges Clouzot's films. It's nowhere near as sinister as the shocking Les Diaboliques, as tragic as the riveting Wages of Fear or as eery as Le Corbeau. Maybe it is due to the vibrance of the dance halls and theater settings of 1940s France, which all work as the milieu of this crime thriller.

Clouzot both understands and approves of his characters, even the more rotten ones, where he has more of a vindictive streak with his other films. Where he may have had understanding for the scheming women in Les Diabolique or the truck drivers who sink to the level of risking horrible death in order to oust themselves from miserable life in The Wages of Fear, there isn't necessarily support or agreement on the part of the filmmaker, for these are characters who plainly made the direct decisions that determine their fate. All the characters in this more settling film have scenes and moments that endear us to them, even the harsh, cold detective played by Louis Jouvet, who worries about his young adoptive son amid all the trouble and despair that happens in his life at any time with the drop of a hat.

There is humor and unabashed sexiness, the latter mostly on the part of Delair, that neutralize the pressure to a degree. Clouzot was quietly practicing his craft, patient till he made his unrelenting later films, in which he would permit his audiences no pardon from the tension.

The Director loves the actress and it shows. The actress inhabits the character, whom we love at first sight and sound. The character loves her jealous unprepossessing husband and he loves her. His childhood friend secretly loves his wife and the fact that his friend is a beautiful woman makes the love tragic and ironic. His wife is jealous of his childhood friend and thinks her attentions are out of secret love for her husband.

Then there is a murder and the investigating police lieutenant, who loves only his bi-racial son, and resents being taken from his company by the above characters, who have had some unpleasant contact with the deceased and are all lying to one degree or another, unravels the mystery with some of the most precise and authentic procedural detail ever captured on film.

And then there are the atmospherics of a post-war Paris, where coal is in short supply, music is filled with erotic longing and wistful memory, and innocence has long ago been washed away by the rain.

All of this in a milieu of magicians whose tricks don't always work, dogs who walk on their hind feet and express music criticism, hungry news reporters and exhausted cops.

And then there are many of the finest actors of their generation who have been through some very bad years directed by, to come full circle, a man who is in love with his lead actress and who, with full justification, was a respected friend of Picasso.

I've seen this film often and I love all of them and it.

This is an exceptional picture with so much to recommend it. The acting and writing are terrific and there are lots of great twists and turns in the plot. As a French "Noir" film, its language is certainly a lot earthier than its American counterparts, but to me this just added to the realism. Additionally, I liked how non-glamorous everyone was--particularly the husband and the lieutenant. About the only negative, and the reason the film gets a 9 and not a 10, is because there was a glaring plot hole. Like another famous French film, Drôle de Drame, the confusion between the cops and the accused could easily have been settled in the beginning, but the characters made rather stupid decisions. For this, you just need to suspend disbelief and keep watching--the payoff is well worth the wait.

This is simply one of the finest French films I have seen. Period.

A nice, humorous mix of music hall (in the first third mostly) and police procedural mystery as the various suspects' stories start to collapse. The final exposure of the murder may come as a surprise if you don't watch closely. A gritty look at Paris of the time. You can ignore the final scene (the Hollywood ending). Louis Jouvet is best as the police inspector who seems to be just passing through, but is really on top of things.

"Quai des Orfèvres is not so famous as Clouzot films such as "Le salaire de la peur" (1953) or "Diabolique" (1955) but very worth watching.

It is a "policier" that derives its title from an (in)famous police station in Paris and in which the story seems to revolve around a murder. In other words this film seems to be a "whodonnit".

The adaptation of the novel by Stanislas André Steeman is however so sloppy that one begins to ask oneself if Clouzot was very interested in the story. I think he was not. He was much more interested in the character development of the main characters.

And so we get to know an ambitious vaudeville artist who turns out te be a faithful wife and a cynical police officer who turns out to be a caring single father. More a "whoamI" then a "whodonnit".

This is a major disappointment and Clouzot fans should be wary. This is no Wages of Fear, Diaboliques or Le Corbeau. I have a feeling that this project was foist upon him after Le Corbeau so upset the French and was his way back. Whatever, this may have a easy going melodramatic charm for some but there is just no edge, no strong and believable action. The characters are hard to believe in and although some allowance should be made for the time and circumstances, I found it hard to stick with this to the end. The music should have been more rousing, the central couple more attractive with some sense of being 'real' and although the police inspector does well there is such a madhouse of characters involved by the end that the film almost turns to farce.

In the postwar Paris, the accompanist pianist Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier) is a jealous man from the upper class married with the ambitious singer Marguerite Chauffournier Martineau, most known by her artistic name Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair), a woman with past from the lower classes. When the lecher but powerful Georges Brignon (Charles Dullin) harasses and invites Jenny for dinner promising a role in a film, Maurice goes to the restaurant and threatens Brignon. A couple of days later, Jenny tells Maurice that she is going to visit her grandmother in another town. However, her husband finds a piece of paper hidden in the kitchen with Brignon's address. Maurice goes to the theater to have an alibi and heads to Brignon's manor during the show with the intention of killing the old man. However, he finds Brignon's house open and the man dead on the floor. When he leaves the crime scene, his car is stolen and Maurice has to walk back to the theater. Meanwhile, Jenny arrives in the house of the lesbian photographer Dora Monier (Simone Renant), who is an old friend of Maurice and has a crush on Jenny, and tells Dora that she has just killed Brignon. But Jenny notes that she had forgotten her fur on the couch in the living room of Brignon's house and Dora takes a cab to retrieve the stole. Inspector Antoine (Louis Jouvet) is assigned to investigate the case and sooner he visits Jenny, Maurice and Dora to check their alibis for that night in the beginning of his investigation.

"Quai des Orfèvres" is an amusing story of an efficient detective investigating a murder in a comedy of errors of the three lead suspects. Henri-Georges Clouzot is one of the best French directors ever and "Quais des Orfèvres" is another gem in his filmography. The witty screenplay has many twists and is supported by the magnificent cinematography in black-and-white and awesome performances. Bernard Blier, the father of Bertrand Blier, is perfect in the role of a jealous cuckold without confidence in his wife and self-respect. Suzy Delair performs an ambitious woman that has a past with lovers and wants to climb positions in the show-business, but loves her husband. Simone Renant is great in the role of a lesbian photographer. But who steals the film is Louis Jouvet, in the role of a detective that seems to be naive, but is capable to find the truth that each character intends to hide. My understanding is that Antoine might be gay since he does not like women. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Crime em Paris" ("Crime in Paris")

Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Quai des Orfevres" (1947) stars Suzy Delair, Bernard Blier, Louis Jouvet, and Charles Dullin. The story takes place in post-war Paris, where an accompanist, Maurice Martineau (Blier) lives with his singer wife, Marguerite, better known as Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair). An important man, Georges Brignon (Dullin) promises Jenny work, and because she's ambitious, she flirts with him. Maurice is an extremely jealous man, so he finds Brignon in a restaurant and threatens him.

Later on, Jenny tells Maurice she is visiting her grandmother, who lives in another town. This gives Maurice a good opportunity to bump off Brignon, especially when he finds the man's address on a piece of paper in the kitchen and realizes Jenny was lying. But when he gets to Brignon's house, Brignon is already dead.

Inspector Antoine (Juvet) is assigned to the case, and it doesn't take him long to realize that some alibis aren't very secure.

Wonderful film, with the excellent Juvet outstanding as Inspector Antoine, and an excellent performance by Simone Renant as a lesbian photographer, Dora, in love with Jenny. Delair, who was involved with Clouzot, is good as a lower-class woman who loves her husband but wants to get ahead in show business as well.

This is Clouzot at his best, with a witty script with some plot twists and a true Parisian atmosphere.

Should we take the opening shot as a strange frame??? I guess we have to. Anyway two women are behind a closing umbrella, they walk upstairs to the talent agency and we go with them...and then they are never to be seen again. Okay, how come not INSIDE the place, at the piano, or even outside with the SOUND of the piano, then track inside and over, a la Hitchcock??? So I guess Clouzot is already telling us in a not very subliminal manner that we are following a segment of postwar society: especially how he then uses a Citizen Kane=like song cut up into about five pieces to show the lady singing traveling from the talent agency all the way to her first roses and applause of her Vaudeville debut.

After that we are relentless observers of more or less small disgusting details of a defeated country getting off its war torn tattered knees. And nobody ever handled small disgust better than Clouzot. In fact, too bad he never tried Sartre's Nausea. Almost everything we see after the first few minutes makes us ever so slightly queasy. ....okay, okay I'm grossly overstating that, let's just settle for a general feel of a lot of the film. Look carefully, in fact, and you will even see one of the cops picking his nose. And in how many films has anyone ever done that. Then there is a very loud nose blowing bit in front of the photographer lesbian by the main cop, and notice that she does not, literally, blink an eye or raise an eyebrow.

The point of all this is an almost feverish immersion in contiguity, seemingly, until you can smell practically every scene as well as see and feel it.

As for the other aspects of the movie, others here have covered them in a lot more detail than I. But forget about the mystery here: this is the ultimate McGuffin. Clouzot is about as interested in the real killer as those two women coming in out of the rain in the first few seconds of the film and are never seen again. From beginning to end all he wanted to do was follow a bunch of people around, not even particularly interesting ones at that, and say, here look at this woman's twitch, that man's hitching of his pants in all their insignificance, years and years before Tina Turner was singing we don't need another hero. \

Even the forced levity of the ending is bleakly done in a dilapidated part of Paris, and rather chilly bare walled apartment. With only the couples love for each other to see them through, as if to say there must be two or three million like you throughout the city, working your fingers off by the day for a little love at night.

From this it was just a short step to Wages of Fear and the ultimate in despair.

They don't even know how to make films like this anymore in the U.S. For that matter, they didn't even know how to very much in France then, much less now. The relentless detail of gesture makes even the neorealists of Italy look like bad psychologists. Which I guess makes Clouzot a kind of Rosselini on speed.

Very enjoyable nonsense, this movie. The only flaw, seems to me, and as was pointed out by another viewer, the lead woman is somehow not quite right. Everybody else in the film is just about perfectly cast.

It takes a while for the scene to set, a subtle intriguing build up, just as you'd expect, but where is it going, this to-ing and fro-ing, as the alibis and excuses unwind and reset? To somewhere quite unexpected is the answer.

My statement about this picture as the most French movie means over so many elements that applying on French cinema itself, there are a Burlesque night club as Paris's trademark, lively nightlife, many girls making everything to get success on show business, jealous husband in French way, a proud policeman inspector who works following the rules, which has a bitter life and even such conditions still walking in the line, also had some snide inquiries, too intense activities on police precinct, a old man buying nudes photos instead to buy famous paintings, cars thieves, anyway all sort of odd characters gathered just in one place, all good people and scum of the society are there, in the middle a frustrated inspector handling all those puzzle without losing his composure, with no family, just an adopted boy, anyway the whole French country were displayed here compressed in this picture, a near masterpiece by Clouzot!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2010 / How many: 2 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9

This film is so lovingly made you want to be part of it forever. The flics are straight but not without malice, the goods are transparent and evildoers are hardly there. Even the "cabaret" are so naive they'll make you daydream with nostalgia in comparison to anything available on TV. Blier is fine, if a bit one sided. Louis Jouvet is perfect, you just can't have a better copper. He has the best line: "My dad cleaned other people's dirt, and I do the same". Susy Delair is unbearable, but I guess in part it's the songs, wardrobe and hairdo. Simone Renant, on the contrary, makes a great femme fatale, if a bit silent. I didn't realize she may be a lesbian as IMDb user dbdumonteil and others rightly suggest.

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.'

A murder followed by a sequence of misunderstandings and deliberate cover-ups successfully fool the audience in this story. The film is a bit long, so falters in places but the storyline and cast are good. You can tell that certain actions are going to come back to haunt the relevant characters and it is entertaining to see if these actions will be found out. Nothing gets by detective Louis Jouvet (Antoine). He is tenacious and is no fool. Can he get to the truth?

Simone Renant (Dora) plays a glamorous lesbian photographer who seems to lead a lonely life of unreciprocated love, although it is suggested that she may well be involved with wannabe heterosexual Suzy Delair (Jenny) who is prepared to do anything to get to the top. That includes sexual favours with influential sleazy Charles Dullin (Brignon) who can get her into movies. Her husband Bernard Blier (Maurice) is her musical accompanist and he is no fan of Dullin. For me, Blier is what is wrong with the film as he doesn't cut it as a leading man – he's short, fat, balding, unattractive and his whole countenance is slightly retarded. No way would Delair be by this man's side. Or so this film leads us to think….

Renant is clearly in the right profession of photographing nude young women and she is my favourite character. All the lead characters have an inner strength when dealing with the police that is admirable. It's a French determination that should be applauded. The women are particularly good in this film. Shame it drags in places and Dullin is slightly unconvincing.