Sept morts sur ordonnance (1975) - film review

Dr Pierre Losseray works at a clinic in a French provincial town and is married to the lovely Muriel.  When he suffers a heart attack, his rivals are quick to exploit the situation.   Dr Breze advises Pierre that he must give up his practice, warning him that his next heart attack could be fatal.  Pierre ignores this advice but then he learns that, ten years before, Breze managed to destroy the reputation of another doctor...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

After a first failure in 1967 with L’Horizon, the none too prolific film director Jacques Rouffio presented his second film, Sept morts sur ordonnance eight years later to the Parisian public, on 3rd December 1975.  This psychological and political thriller is a Franco- Hispano- German co-production in colour, based on a true story which took place in Reims.  Rouffio and his technical crew filmed in France and Spain (some unknown Spanish and German actors take several small parts).  The script and well-honed dialogue are also Rouffio’s work. 

The film’s strong characters are played by a remarkable Michel Piccoli, a flamboyant Gérard Depardieu, a dramatic Jane Birkin, an impeccable Marina Vlady, a magnificent Charles Vanel and an excellent Michel Auclair.  This masterpiece of 1970s French cinema is probably Rouffio’s most powerful film.  About Philippe Sarde’s soundtrack, a clever and thrilling score, one calls to mind the work of American Jerry Goldschmidt.   This disturbing and shocking drama compares with some of Claude Chabrol’s films and, in its best moments, has some of the bite of Costa-Gavras’s work.  Rouffio’s ruthless reflection on scandals and unfair practices in the medical world in not so far from our present reality and the film has lost none of its original impact.

Today, some will say that the development of the characters caught in a spider’s web is out of date, that the film has lost its rhythm and structure and that Gérard Depardieu (27 at the time) was too young for the part.  However when the physical and mental identification between Piccoli and Depardieu becomes evident no one can deny that the movie’s power is due to the parallel between the destinies of their two characters. 

Other films from Jacques Rouffio are Violette et Francois and Le Sucre, but another spectacular success will be the 1981 film La Passante du sans-souci, starring Romy Schneider in her last role.  Sept morts sur ordonnance can be discovered and rediscovered on DVD.

© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium) 2012

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