This post-war French suspense film features a very Hitchcockian Innocent Man plot. I was thus unsurprised when, after having watched it, I noticed that it had been directed by master director Henry-Georges Clouzot (Wages of Fear, Diabolique), often called the French Hitchcock.
The set-up involves a pianist, Maurice, who married to Jenny, a popular vaudeville singer. He’s perpetually jealous, which is accerbated by the fact that she’s a natural flirt. Moreover, she’s ambitius, and willing to use her vivacous nature to ease her way. (Later in the film we learn that Jenny had had sex pre-marital sex, and presumably this helps drive Maurice’s possessiveness.) In the middle is Dora, a childhood friend of Maurice’s, who seems to be as in love with him as Jenny is.
We eventually learn that he had no reason to be jealous, but he can’t help his suspiscous nature any more than Jenny can help her outgoing one. He is especially inflamed when she attracts the attention of Brignon, a notorious degenerate who’s moral blight is mirrored by his hunchbacked form.
Unsurprisingly, and after Maurice has publically threatened him, Brignon is found murdered in his house. Eventually all three of our main characters visit the house before the body is found, and all of them attempt to cover for each other as police detective Antoine begins to zero in on Maurice. Ironically, he is innocent, but his own mechanations vis a vias Brignon now come back to bite him in the ass. (A very Hitchcockian element is when Maurice’s friends, in attempting to help him, inadvertantly draw Antoine’s attentions to holes in his alibi.)
The film is more character than plot driven. Brignon was such a pig that we’re encouraged to feel symphathy for his killer, and thus both admire and fear Antoine’s doggedness, and intelligance. He retains a strong sense of humanity, however, which we especially see in his tenderly drawn relationship with his young son, a muletto who resulted from a stint in the Foreign Legion. The tone of the movie’s wrap-up might strike some as out of place with the rest of the film, but I was satisfied.
One of the character’s motivations, meanwhile, proves surprising, and certainly isn’t anything that would have gotten by in an American film made back then. On the other hand, much of the material wouldn’t have flown. Dora is a photographer, and shoot pornographic pictures for Brignon. Jenny’s history of “extra-marital” (i.e., pre-marital) affairs is mentioned. Brignon’s lust for the ladies is more openly portrayed than would have been the case in the States. Antoine’s half-black son (presumably from Algeria) also is hard to imagine.
Michael Wilmington, reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, refers to Quai des Orfevresas as being a Noir. (Don’t read his review, by the way. It contains an entirely too casual spoiler.) I disagree. Despite the often sordid subject matter, the fact is that most of the characters are stumbling over each other to protect the other, and that to me is the antithesis of the betrayal-ridden plots of proper Noir movie.
Aside from the subject matter, the actors themselves are less glamourous than they would have been in an American movie. Maurice is a bit of a chubby, balding schlub, really, and thus we must take Jenny and Dora’s passion for him on more or less on faith. Jenny herself, meanwhile, is not exactly Rita Hayworth or anything. It’s odd, but a cast of such authentically normal-looking people just seems odd in a film.
Fans of old crime movies will probably find this a pretty good ride, as will foreign film buffs. I wouldn’t call it a masterwork (although Wages of Fear and Diabolique might qualify.) The DVD comes from the fine folks at Criterion, enough of a recommendation in itself, with the sole extra being a long TV segment from the ’70s in which some of the cast revisits the film.
