Film Review
From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, Gilles Grangier directed a number
of noir-style thrillers that range from the inspired -
Gas-oil (1955),
125, rue Montmartre (1959)
- to the mundane and painfully derivative -
Trois jours à vivre
(1958),
Maigret voit rouge
(1963).
Échec au porteur falls between these two extremes
and, whilst it is hardly Grangier's best work, it is interesting because
it makes an attempt to progress beyond the bog-standard formulaic French
policier of this time and move in the direction of the modern police procedural
drama that would become its natural successor in the following decade. The
location scenes shot on some waste ground outside the city look like an obvious
nod towards the Italian neo-realists and it is apparent that Grangier is
striving to give his thriller a more realist edge, amidst all the casually
recycled noir motifs.
This might also explain another pecularity of the film. Even though it features
some incredibly starry actors - Paul Meurisse, Gert Fröbe, Jeanne Moreau,
Serge Reggiani - most of these barely have more than a minor role in the
proceedings and equal prominence is given to far lesser known (and far less
capable) actors in more ample roles. Like many of his old school contemporaries
(Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy, Claude Autant-Lara),
Grangier appears to have suddenly taken stock of the complacency that had
crept into French cinema in the 1950s and is now suddenly doing his best
to move things forwards - ahead of the arrival of the French New Wave.
Échec au porteur's main shortcoming is a far-fetched plot which
(taken from a novel by Noël Calef) totally fails to convince.
With contrivance built upon contrivance, the insultingly pedestrian narrative
has lost just about every scrap of credibility it has by the mid-point, and
thereafter Grangier is fighting a losing battle to maintain our interest.
Hitchcock would doubtless have had great fun with the film's suspense
element, but Grangier (helped by his totally inept screenwriters) makes a
meal of this and merely serves up tedium in its place. The pace flags,
the characters become nothing more than feeble archetypes (some of the acting
is atrocious), and you'd be forgiven for giving up on it way before the all-too
predictable pay-off. Everything about the film is second-rate, B-movie
trash, and yet somehow Grangier prevents it from being a total disaster.
Reggiani appears only in the first half of the film, but his presence alone
is enough to give the film a reality that many comparable French thrillers
of this time lacked. Fröbe's natural aura of menace comes with
a touch of cartoonish villainy that anticipates the actor's
most famous role (as the best Bond villain of them all in
Goldfinger). Best of all,
Meurisse (taking over from Reggiani at the mid-point) is as convincing as
ever in the role he was best suited for, that of the driven, never-say-die
cop. The presence of such fine actors as these (Moreau barely gets
a look in), together with a suitably tense and dramatic shoot out at the
film's grim climax, redeem what would otherwise have been another botched
policier.
© James Travers, Willems Henri 2017
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Next Gilles Grangier film:
Le Désordre et la nuit (1958)
Film Synopsis
Bastien Sassey has grown weary of his criminal life and intends making a
fresh start with his girlfriend Jacqueline. For the past few years,
he has found himself a steady income by working as a courier for a gang of
drugs traffickers, but now all he wants is to lead an honest life with the
girl he loves. Before he can do so, however, he needs some money to
get started, and this he plans to obtain by taking on one last job.
On this occasion, he betrays his usual employer by offering his services
to a rival gang led by Hans.
Bastien collects the consignment of drugs, which are, as usual, concealed
in a football, and proceeds with the delivery. What he doesn't know
is that instead of drugs, Hans has placed inside the ball a time bomb which
is due to go off in ten hours' time. Happy that his life of crime is
finally drawing to a close, Bastien makes his way across town and unwittingly
gets the football mixed up with another one when he runs into a gang of boys
playing on a patch of waste ground. When this mix-up is relayed back
to Hans he is furious and immediately sends his right-hand man Dédé
to kill the troublesome Bastien.
Bastien is naturally horrified when it dawns on him that the ball he was
due to deliver contains a bomb and is now being kicked around nonchalantly
by a gang of children. Before he dies from his gunshot wounds, he manages
to get a warning to the police, who immediately swing into action and start
scouring the town for the deadly football. Superintendent Varzeilles
takes charge of the search but despite his best efforts the location of the
ball remains a mystery. No one knows that the ball is in the possession
of a boy who has just gone down with acute appendicitis. Unable to
part with the ball, little Giraucourt insists on taking it with him when
he is admitted into hospital...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.