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Late Gabin picture has interest

Jean Gabin is not playing Inspecteur Maigret here, but he is a detective investigating the murder of a night club owner who also deals heroin. Nadja Tiller plays a glamourous habituee of the club who falls for Gabin; she is also a junkie. Her scene of withdrawal is far from the gritty reality, she just seems to have a hangover and sweats a bit.

I was impressed with Hazel Scott in a small part as the club's pianist-singer. This Barbadian-born performer married Adam Clayton Powell and had to leave the US in the Fifties because of her leftist politics. She was played by Vanessa L. Williams in a recent made for TV movie. On the basis of this small part, she could have had a career like Dorothy Dandridge's.

Author: calculo from Belgium
19 August 2002

They form a couple that you don't forget: Inspector Georges Vallois (Jean Gabin) and Lucky Fridel (Nadja Tiller), the latter being a former miss Austria. Her beauty and her charm change the mind of the inspector and turn him away from his duties. There is a game of attraction and repulsion between both as never seen in French cinema. He could be her father. There is a scene where Vallois answers tho her father that she could end up in prostitution if her father does not give her money anymore. Does Valois feel pity for her? The novel by Jacques Robert inspired the experienced director Gilles Grangier to this movie with a peculiar ending. Also Thérèse Marken (Danielle Darieux) give the dialogues between her and Vallois a captivating tension. Vallois is a bit Maigret-like but he has his own touch and is more human. It is also remarkable that the writer Jacques Robert adapted later a novel of Georges Simenon for the screen (Maigret voit rouge). This movie has kept all its freshness after those years but the problem of junkies has still grown more.

Although it is not based on a Simenon novel,the atmosphere recalls that of the Belgian writer.And Audiard comes up with one good line or two particularly when Gabin tells Darrieux that ,with her medicine,she can calm her protégée forever.

Another proof positive that Grangier was a good director in the fifties and if this one is not as exciting as "Danger De Mort" or "Retour A L'Envoyeur " ,it's because the writers hesitate between detective story and psychological drama.The two sides of the plot do not hang well together ;besides,Darrieux's part,very important,is underwritten and it's 45 minutes before she appears.

Grangier knew how to show the big city at night with its lights ,its darkness on the edge ,its shady places .He was not afraid,like Decoin in "Razzia Sur LA Chnouff " to show an already drug-addicted youth.The Commissaire /Young girl relationship is as much father /daughter as it is lovers .This loser is actually from a wealthy German family,a subject which would be trendy ten years later in the wake of May 68.

Author: msroz from United States
26 March 2016

"Le désordre et la nuit" (1958) is a good to very good film noir from the classic era, which means a bygone age and atmosphere of style, music, clothing, architecture, and human attitudes and conversation that cannot be reproduced today. These noirs far surpass being merely historical documents that incite feelings among those of us who lived through the era. They reach for a permanent place in the pantheon of durable artistic endeavors, a place that can be appreciated when that era is long gone. What makes it so is the approach that saturates these films and the way they look that complements that approach. "Le désordre et la nuit" is fully-inhabited by that noir approach, which is both a view of and a way of dealing with the human condition. Disorder reflects uncertainty and a world with uncertain roots and values. Night reflects an emphasis on the darker threads in human relations. In this movie, most of it occurs literally at night and in night spots. The film has beautiful lighting.

The story is a detective murder mystery. A shady night club owner has been shot to death. He was some distance away from his companion still in the car, Nadja Tiller, so she's a witness of sorts. Jean Gabin is the detective on the case. There are several suspects who have gained by this killing. What is of central interest is Tiller's character and the mutual attraction with Gabin. In exploring her character, however, we get to see the night club world she inhabits, its patrons and its denizens, its entertainers (like Hazel Scott) and its underworld connections. She's hooked on morphine, another facet of this world. Jazz and drugs enter at the very beginning of the film.

Gabin's world is a police world in which there is pressure on him from above (François Chaumette) to make an arrest. Gabin has a far different way of handling the case, and his feelings for Tiller are part of it. He is methodical and patient. He knows or suspects that Tiller's connection to the deceased is critical but he prefers to explore her circle of friends rather than pressure her or arrest her, as Chaumette wants.

This is not an action-packed story. It is not even that suspenseful. But it holds us through very good writing that's at times quite novel and surprising, through fine performances that also include that of Danielle Darrieux, through well-done sets, and the skilled direction of Gilles Grangier with whom Gabin had a long association.

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
18 August 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Although the French made some terrific film noir movies, in some cases it's more than just the language that makes them different from their American counterparts. Take "The Night Affair", for example. It has a plot that NEVER would have been used in an American film of the day--unless major changes had been made in the plot. Keep reading and I think you'll agree.

The film stars Jean Gabin as a police detective. This surprised me a bit, as in almost all the films I've seen him in, he's played a bad guy--a career criminal, a dangerous psychotic or a guy on the run from the law. However, the role seemed less surprising when I saw what sort of cop he was, as his moral compass was a bit impaired. This is apparent when he meets a very pretty lady who turns out to be a prostitute. He sleeps with her and the next day notices the tell-tale signs that she is a drug addict. Instead of dropping her or perhaps arresting her, however, he spends the rest of the movie running interference for her--even when it appears she might have committed murder.

As I said above, the plot is NOT like an American film noir. While cops COULD be evil or have a misdirected ethical base, sleeping with a junkie is not something you're going to see in a 1950s American film.Now my comments are not necessarily a complaint. The film is well made and somewhat interesting--though it does drag a bit as the film progresses. It's worth seeing--mostly because Gabin's performance is his usual effortless and graceful job.

This film has some lovely strengths, beginning with beefy yet still-virile 1958 Gabin. He's always interesting to watch, and he carries a gravitas here that leaves one hanging on his every word.The film is set to a nice jazz score, including French and English songs from a black American entertainer at a time when Paris was more embracing of such talent than her native shores.

I was less thrilled with the ditsy moll in this film, an actress I'd never seen before -- Nadja Tiller, who resembles both Natalie Wood and Jeanne Moreau but seriously lacks their talent. She was pretty but imbecilic and I was surprised the hard-boiled Gabin character fell for her at all. To view their non-sexual time together, it's clearly a case of a middle-aged man taking care of the child he never had and a psychologically underdeveloped girl seeking a substitute for her real, less-kind father.

Another deficit in this film is the flimsy mystery at its heart. We start with an uninteresting murder victim and progress to a duplicitous pharmacist and mumbo jumbo about drug addiction. It wasn't easy to care much about who really done it.This isn't one of Gabin's masterpieces but if you're a fan of this handsome French hunk it won't be a total waste of your time.