Cette nuit là... (1958)
Directed by Maurice Cazeneuve

Film Review

On the face of it, Cette nuit-là resembles a fairly routine thriller of the 1950s.  The plot (taken from a novel by Michel Lebrun entitled Un silence de mort) is one you'd expect to find in any potboiler crime movie of this era, with twists and turns that (for anyone familiar with the genre) are all pretty predictable.  What sets the film apart is the sheer economy of its mise-en-scène and how effectively its director Maurice Cazeneuve (aided by some top-notch performances from a fine principal cast) manages to eke every last drop of tension from the fairly formulaic narrative.

This was the first and only film that Cazeneuve made for the cinema - astonishing when you consider the promise he shows in this masterfully crafted debut work.   Cazeneuve started out as an assistant to Marcel Carné on the aborted La Fleur de l'âge before making his move to French television, where he spent the bulk of his career.  From the opening shot - which looks like a cheeky homage to the famous 'reveal' in To Catch a Thief (1955) - Cazeneuve looks as if he is taking his cue from Alfred Hitchcock, and if there is one word that best describes Cette nuit-là it is Hitchcockian.  The small cast of characters trapped in a deadly game of fear, deceit and manipulation, the slow ratcheting up of the tension to a supremely dramatic climax, the spell-binding performances that grab our attention and never let go for a second - these are the defining features of Hitchcock's oeuvre that Cazeneuve masterfully replicates and - in a few memorable scenes - slightly improves upon.

Much of the film's hypnotic power is owed to Léonce-Henri Burel's eerily atmospheric photography, which gives the film a distinctive film noir feel very different to what you would find in most French thrillers of this time.   One of the most gifted of cinema's cinematographers, Burel started out in the silent era, adding in no small measure to the genius of  Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927), and ended by helping to define Robert Bresson's unique visual style on such films as Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (1956).  After this exemplary effort, Burel would lend his talents to another seductively noirish thriller, Julien Duvivier's Chair de poule (1963).  With such strongly expressive visuals, Cette nuit-là hardly needs a score to accompany it, and it is interesting how little music there is - indeed, the absence of music is one of the reasons why the film is so unbearably tense.

As befits a quality B-movie, Cette nuit-là does not boast a big name star but instead three highly talented near-stars, who provide just as much value with more in the way of copper-bottomed authenticity.  Mylène Demongeot's career was very much on the up following her appearance in Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (1958), although her career petered out in the late '60s and she never quite achieved the stardom that was due to her.  Jean Servais's career stretched back to the 1930s but was virtually over by the early 1950s - Jules Dassin came to his rescue by giving him the role for which he is now best remembered in the iconic thriller Du rififi chez les hommes (1955).  Although highly regarded, Maurice Ronet would spend most of his career in the shadow of more charismatic and better promoted actors like Alain Delon.  His premature death at the age of 55 has added to his unjustly low profile outside France. 

Servais, Ronet and Demongeot were not as well-served by cinema as their talents merited, and this is evident throughout Cette nuit-là, a film which plays to each of their strengths and leaves us begging for more.   Here are three characters that are all too easy to engage with - a cruel publishing magnate who thinks he can take anything he wants (sounds familiar?), a neurotic lackey who, obsessed with gaining control over his life, ends up laying his own path to Hell, and the ambiguous femme fatale caught in the middle of a dangerous game of domination and submission.  The script may not be much to write home about, but the film's three lead actors bring an astonishing depth and reality to their performances - and ultimately this is what makes Cette nuit-là one of the most nerve-racking French thrillers you will ever see.

Film Synopsis

Jean Maillet and his dazzlingly photogenic wife Sylvie both work for a publishing house owned by Monsieur Reverdy, a ruthless businessman who is used to getting what he wants.  Maillet is the designer on one of Reverdy's glossier magazines, for which his wife is the principal model.  When Reverdy begins to take an interest in Sylvie and shows signs of wanting to take her away from him, Jean becomes consumed with jealousy and contemplates murdering his employer.  Late one night, Jean sees a man leaving Reverdy's bachelor pad and, mistaking him for his rival, smashes his head with the handle of his revolver.  Realising that he has killed the wrong man, Jean flees in a panic, not yet knowing that he has left the keys to his car and the murder weapon at the scene of the crime.  Anxious hours follow as Jean and Sylvie wait for the police to turn up at their apartment with an arrest warrant - but no one does show up.  There is no account of the murder in the newspapers and it seems that the crime has yet to be discovered.  Then Jean receives a letter from a stranger who insists on seeing him.  It seems that someone witnessed the murder and intends blackmailing Jean.  But are thing really what they seem...?