L’Inconnu dans la maison (1992)

L’Inconnu dans la maison is a French crime film first released in 1992, directed by Georges Lautner.  The film is based on a novel by Georges Simenon and stars Jean-Paul Belmondo, Renée Faure, Cristiana Réali, Sébastien Tavel and François Perrot.  It has also been released under the title: Stranger in the House.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


After his wife committed suicide, an eminent lawyer, Loursat, became a recluse, taking solace in solitude and vintage wine.  Ten years on, he is barely on speaking terms with his daughter and housekeeper, his only companions in his large house.  One evening, Loursat hears a gunshot and finds the dead body of a young man in one of his rooms.  Anxious that his daughter may be implicated in the murder, he decides to take charge of the criminal investigation...

Georges Lautner was the third film director to adapt Georges Simenon’s novel Les Inconnus dans la maison.  After Henri Decoin’s masterful 1942 version (which starred the acting legend Raimu ) came Pierre Rouve’s lacklustre  Stranger in the House, released in 1967 and starring James Mason.  In updating the original novel to a contemporary setting, Lautner manages to lose much of the atmosphere and psychological depth of Simenon’s work, so whilst the film is competently made, it is essentially little more than a conventional court room drama.  Far from being the action hero of previous decades, the ever charismatic Jean-Paul Belmondo still dominates the film and gives what is most probably one of his better film performances.  The actor’s real life sister, Muriel Belmondo, appears in the film, playing his cousin.

© James Travers 2005

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