An inspector calls

Author: jotix100 from New York
16 December 2005

"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.

*

Author: heliotropetwo from United States
8 October 2006

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.

*

Author: dbdumonteil
14 August 2001

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.

*

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
20 October 2005

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.

*

Author: jzappa from Cincinnati, OH, United States
2 November 2008

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.

*

Author: psteier from New York
29 October 2002

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.

*

Author: Galina from Virginia, USA
26 September 2007

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".

*

Author: Darragh O' Donoghue (hitch1899_@hotmail.com) from dublin, ireland
12 June 2000

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

After his shocking masterpiece LE CORBEAU was denounced by both the Gestapo AND the Resistance (who felt its negative portrait of the French was pro-German; and they did have such a wonderful war), Clouzot was suspended from film-making activities for three years. If it was expected on his return that Clouzot would try to 'atone' for his bleakness with more reassuring fare, than people didn't know him. QUAI DES ORFEVRES seems an easier pill to swallow than its predecessor - the brooding Expressionism of LE CORBEAU is more restrained here; the characters are nicer; there is even a bright, happy ending set at Christmas, time of rebirth, renewal, redemption - then it's just as hard to digest.

Although billed as a Louis Jouvet film, the great theatrical innovator who plays the bluff detective, the first third concentrates solely on the build up to the crime, and is a wonderful insight into the theatre and domesiticity. Jenny Lamour is a singer determined to make it big in the music hall. This, of course, means pursuing dubious contacts, inflaming the insane jealousy of her timid, balding, accompanist husband, Maurice Martineau.

The more successful Jenny becomes, the more elderly gentlemen friends push themselves in her interests. One in particular, an odious, wizened, lecherous old goat keeps inviting her to restaurants and his huge town mansion. Exasperated, Maurice storms into his booth and threatens to kill him. One night, his wife goes off to meet him anyway. Armed with a pistol, he goes to the lecher's mansion, only to find signs of a struggle and the man's corpse.

Made during the great cycle of Hollywood noirs, ORFEVRES departs from its more famous counterpart in a number of ways. There is no chic fatalism here: the working class background roots the characters in genuine social problems, rather than some vague existential trauma - Jenny's urge to make it as a star is as much an attempt to escape poverty and paralysis as it is to court attention, while Maurice's conservatoire training has only kept him down as a virtual menial. This complex mixture of class and gender relations is uniquely European.

So when Clouzot overlays the screen with bars - on windows, doors, stairs, grates etc. - he is not using an overused trope suggesting metaphysical claustrophobia, but showing how his characters' lives are a literal prison, partly through chance, which is why we have a thriller, but also by a circumstance that means Jenny has to virtually prostitute herself to raise her station. The film, then, concentrates less on the thriller mechanics (which are still exciting) than on the plot's effect on two ordinary people way out of their depths, one driven to despair. When, at the end, amid the bright lighting and festive japery, Clouzot frames his couple through a frighteningly tangible set of bars, as well as sadistically (if comically) interrupting their idyll, we feel a chill.

In keeping with the French crime tradition, Clouzot's surface realism is subverted at every point. The dingy flats, the packed, smoky nightclubs, with their lecherous men and disapproving women, all bespeak authenticity. But the theatrical setting gives the movie a playful feel, as if people are playing a role, nobody being quite what they seem. The film frequently breaks for musical interruptions as if the whole thing is a show. The importance of mirrors, especially when Maurice comes to the nightclub on the night of the murder, seems transformative, as in a fantasy, an entry into a mirroring, but alternative universe, as well as revealing the fragmentation of characters torn between desire and reality. Clouzot's strange, alienating editing in moments of high realism confirms this. This is not to minimise the characters' trauma, or the seriousness of the film - Clouzot just asks us not to accept the surface of the film too passively.

For a supposed misanthrope, Clouzot was always a great director of actors, and he has three of the best here - Suzy Delair offers a vibrant vulgarity rarely seen in elegant French cinema; the incomparable Louis Jouvet suggest the perversion and sadism behind his gruff, decent Inspector. Bernard Blier, through, is a revelation - sweaty, blank, passionate, a 40s Monsieur Hire; his continual buffeting in this film, from envy to despair, is painful to watch.

*

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
27 January 2011

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")

*

Author: Terrell-4 from San Antonio, Texas
8 March 2008

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Is it a murder mystery? Is it a police procedural? Is it a back-stage look at seedy French music halls? Quai des Orfevres is all of these, but more than anything else it's an amusing comedy of infidelity, jealousy and love, set in post-WWII Paris. It may be surprising that Henri- Georges Clouzot, the director of such grim films as Le Corbeau or such suspenseful nail- biters as Diabolique and The Wages of Fear, is the director of this one. Clouzot, however, was a shrewd film-maker. "In a murder mystery," he tells us, 'there's an element of playfulness. It's never totally realistic. In this I share Hitchcock's view, which says, 'A murder mystery is a slice of cake with raisins and candied fruit, and if you deny yourself this, you might as well film a documentary.'" Quai des Orfevres is a wonderful film, and it's no documentary.

Jenny Martineau (Suzy Delair) is an ambitious singer at music halls and supper clubs. She's a flirt, she's sees nothing too wrong with using a bit of sex as well as talent to get a contract. Her stage name is Jenny Latour. And she really loves her husband, Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier). Martineau is something of a sad sack. He's her accompanist and arranger. He's a bit balding, a bit chubby and jealous to a fault. Then we have their neighbor, the photographer Dora Monnier (Simone Renant). She's blond, gorgeous (think of Rita Hayworth) and capable. She and Martineau have been friends since they were children together. Dora, however, is definitely not thinking just of friendship when she looks at Jenny. Then comes along Georges Brignon (Charles Dullin), a wizened, rich and dirty old man, who often has Dora take "art" photographs of his young female proteges whom he poses himself. He offers a contract for a film to Jenny, and suggests a dinner at his home to discuss the details. Jenny is more than willing. Maurice is furious and forbids it. Jenny shouts right back at him, "You're jealous of the rich! Well, I want my share of their dough. I'm all for royalty!" "You're dad was a laborer," Maurice shouts back. "So what? Under Louis XV, I'd have been Madame de Pompadour! I'd have heated up their tights!"

And after Brignon is found dead with a smashed champagne bottle next to his bleeding skull, there's Dora to try to make things safe for Jenny. But wait. Inspector Antoine gets the case. Antoine (Louis Jouvet) is a tall, tired, middle-aged bachelor with sore feet. He has seen it all. He served in "the colonies" with the Foreign Legion and returned with an adopted baby and malaria. The child is now about eight-years old and Antoine dotes on him. One of the first things Antoine discovers is not only did someone brain Brignon with a bottle, someone shot him in the heart. Who did it? Before long Jenny, Maurice and Dora all are making up alibis, lying and, at one or another point, confessing. How will Antoine discover the murderer? Will we have a chance to see some great music hall songs sung by Jenny Latour? Everything becomes clear, but only with time and Detective Antoine's persistence. We are left with many kinds of love leading to all kinds of motives, from hair-trigger jealousy to longing glances...and all played with a nice mixture of Gallic amusement.

Clouzot takes us to a Paris of seedy but not threatening neighborhoods, to downtrodden music publishers where tunes are played on the piano for buyers, to restaurants with discrete private dining rooms. Most of all, he takes us to the music hall where Jenny Latour often performs. We can see Jenny as she sings, with couples in the seats and single men wearing their coats and hats in standing room. And everyone smokes. The first third of the film, in fact, takes place largely in this milieu. With Jenny singing about "Her petite tra-la-la, her sweet tra-la-la," we follow her from trying out the song at the publishers to a rehearsal to a saucy performance with Jenny in a feathered hat, a corset, gartered stockings and not much else.

Delair, Blier and Renant all do wonderful jobs, but it Louis Jouvet who holds everything together. He was a marvelous actor who disliked making films. The stage was his world, and he took on films only if he happened to like the director and to make money to finance his stage work. Jouvet was tall with a long face and broad cheekbones. He was not conventionally handsome but he had what it takes to dominate a scene. For a look at how skillfully he could play comedy, watch him in Drole de Drame. He's a fascinating actor. At one point he says, "I've taken a liking to you, Miss Dora Monnier." "Me?" she asks. "Yes. Because you and I are two of a kind. When it comes to women, we'll never have a chance." Jouvet brings all kinds of nuances to that line, from rueful regret to a gentle amusement.