Les Inconnus dans la maison (1942)

Les Inconnus dans la maison is a French crime film first released in 1942, directed by Henri Decoin.  The film stars Raimu, Juliette Faber, Gabrielle Fontan, Héléna Manson and Tania Fédor.  It has also been released under the title: Strangers in the House.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Since his wife left him, almost twenty years ago, the once brilliant lawyer Loursat has slumped into a life of despondency and drunkenness.  He lives in a vast empty house with his teenage daughter, Nicole, with whom he hardly communicates.  One fateful day, something happens which pulls Loursat back from the abyss: he discovers a dead body in his house.  When his daughter and her group of rebellious young friends are charged with the murder, Loursat decides to take charge of the case.

This atmospheric work excels mainly on the strength of the performance of its lead actor, Raimu, arguably one of French cinema’s greatest talents.  Few other actors from this period could have conveyed so convincingly the transformation we see the film’s main character undergo as he suddenly discovers a reason for living after years of withdrawal.

It is also one of Henri Decoin’s best directorial efforts, far more impressive than the generally lacklustre films he turned out after World War II.   The hauntingly noirish photography and austere sets vividly convey a mood of futility and despair, such as might have prevailed in France in its darkest hour under Nazi Occupation.  The film also offered a timely plea to society to treat its younger citizens with more tolerance and respect, to try to understand their point of view before rushing to judgement.

The film, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, was remade twice – once in America in 1967 and again in France in 1992, with respectively James Mason and Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead role.  Neither film stands up well when compared with Decoin’s magnificent 1942 version.

© James Travers 2003


Those with a tenuous grasp of French and a firmer grasp of Hollywood fodder may tend to associate this French classic (whose title translates as Strangers in the House) with Joseph Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers (1949), a near contemporaneous effort featuring Edward G. Robinson as a tyrannical banker.  Bad move.  Like all great movies, this begins with the screenplay and here we have Henri-Georges Clouzot (moonlighting from his day job as Head of Scripts at Continental) adapting a novel by Georges Simenon and thrusting it into the more than capable hands of Henri Decoin.  The latter blew on it gently and invested it with an enchanted life.  Add to these names that of one of the greatest actors France has ever produced, Raimu, and you are nine-tenths of the way towards a classic.  

Realistically, we didn’t need to supplement Raimu with such sterling character actors as Gabrielle Fontan, Noël Roquevert and Jean Tissier, but nevertheless there they are to be savoured as a bonus.  Given the nature of the story - our old friend, the town on trial - it’s a nice touch to have as narrator Pierre Fresnay, who would, of course, go on to top-bill Clouzot’s own directorial debut on the same lines, Le Corbeau.  If you absolutely insist on a soupçon of trivia, how about Martine Carol as an onlooker in the public gallery.

As it happened, Raimu’s career, as well as his life, was drawing to a close, and if this had turned out to be his swan song it would have been beyond magnificent.  As it was, he starred in two or three further films, but nothing to touch his performance as the burnt-out alcoholic lawyer who is suddenly and unexpectedly handed a purpose in life when he finds a stiff in his home.  Instead of stepping over it to get to another bottle of cognac, he decides to take up the cudgels on behalf of the patsy lined up to take the fall.  Superb.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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