User Reviews

From the Michel Simon 6-pack I recently bought. Two of my favourite actors from the 1930's, Michel Simon and Pierre Brasseur, and Raymond Rouleau one of the handsomest stars in France after the war, plus two singing stars, Jean-Roger Caussimon and Catherine Sauvage join forces to make a fitfully absorbing noir set in a railway station in a sleepy French town. There's been a murder, or a series of murders, I wasn't too sure, and the police seem helpless to solve the case. The married couple played by Caussimon and Sauvage are too offputting to engage our interest, Simon throws a temper fit for some reason I couldn't discern, and Brasseur is left to hold the story together which he does pretty well. This film is primarily for people who feel sentimental about train stations going to seed in towns that time has passed by.

Ivan Govar's name is completely forgotten today,although one of his films "Un soir Par Hasard" a bizarre pseudo -supernatural movie retains a certain following cult still today."Deux Heures à Tuer" his final effort released three years later is ,in a way,more of the same:a strange "in camera"thriller in a small railway station during two hours in real time (like "the set up" "Cleo De Cinq A Sept" "the rope").Some people (station staff,travellers) hold conversations sometimes incomplete in the waiting room or on the platforms:there's trouble in this little town cause a serial killer is at large and nobody knows who he is:he might be among them in the station.

Ivan Govar wants to create a threatening noir atmosphere but he only partially succeeds.Most of the time,the conversations are uninteresting and revolve around banality (the wife ,the husband,the male lover).Govar relies on his actors ,all were veterans who had seen better days:Michel Simon,Pierre Brasseur,Raymond Rouleau plus singer Catherine Sauvage.Only the scenes between Brasseur and Simon generate some fear ,more because of the talent of these thespians than of the script. The ending is admittedly intriguing enough,but sitting through the whole thing is a different matter.This ending is much less disappointing than that of "Un Soir Par Hasard" though.....