Masques (1987) - film review

Christian Legagneur is the host of a popular television talent show and engages a young reporter, Roland Wolf, to write his biography.  Unbeknown to Legagneur, Wolf’s motivation to take on the job was to allow him to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his younger sister, who was once a close friend of Legagneur’s daughter.  Whilst staying at his employer’s country house, Wolf discovers that Legagneur has a sinister secret and that he may not be the genial, chivalrous individual that he appears to be on the television...

This film asks a pertinent question: what lies beneath the mask of an apparently pleasant and sugar-sweet public figure?  Can such a person be utterly wicked, capable of fraud, deceit – even murder – and get away with all that unnoticed?   How far can the public image and the private reality differ?

For the subject of his analysis, Chabrol could not have chosen a better actor than Philippe Noiret.  In his role, Noiret is so successful that it is virtually impossible to believe that his character could harm a fly – until the truly disturbing scene when his daughter shows him a bird in a cage, triggering a phobic reaction that causes the mask to slip – albeit for just a moment.  After that, the mask stays firmly in place, until the last possible moment.  Of course, by this stage we already know the worst and far from being a nice, amiable individual, Noiret’s character has an air of genuine menace, even though the mask is back in place.  This shows great subtlety in Noiret’s performance which Chabrol uses to great effect.

When the mask finally does fall, as it has to, and Legagneur turns on his television viewers, we see the truth in an instant and ask ourselves: how could we have been so blind?  More disturbingly, we begin to question – as Chabrol intended we should – whether any real-life TV presenters have similar dark secrets.

Whilst not quite in the league of some of Chabrol’s other thrillers (most notably the superb La Cérémonie), Masques is a film which does have some gripping moments and some sparkling dialogue.  The ending is as funny as it is tragic, and, as a thought-provoker, it achieves its objective a little too successfully.

© James Travers 1999

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