Gibier de potence (1951)
Directed by Roger Richebé

Film Review

Whilst he certainly had his detractors (the esteemed screenwriter Henri Jeanson being the most outspoken) Roger Richebé deserves to be recognised as one of the more capable French film directors of his generation.  Indeed, he brought a great deal of artistry to a wide range of genres, which included melodrama, historical drama, comedy and noir-style thriller.  Gibier de potence is among Richebé's most compelling films, a slick adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same title by the Prix Goncourt winning author Jean-Louis Curtis.  It is a film that deals with a subject that was hardly ever been touched on before in French cinema, namely male prostitution, and does so with surprising candour and directness for its time.  The film also broke new ground with a sequence in which the photogenic lead actors Georges Marchal and Nicole Courcel strip naked and make an innocent night-time swim resemble a passionate love scene - incredible to think that this preceded Louis Malle's Les Amants (controversial for its nude scenes) by a full seven years.

Gibier de potence's other claim to fame is that it gave Arletty, one of the great icons of French cinema, the opportunity to play a truly evil character, something that eluded her for most of her career.  Arletty was of course famous for playing seedy individuals, mostly prostitutes slinking about out in the lower depths of Paris, but rarely was she cast as an outright villain, and the main joy of Roger Richebé's film is watching her play a truly vile specimen of humanity, and doing so with absolute conviction.  (A decade previously, Arletty had delivered a similar knock-out performance in another film by Richebé, Madame Sans-Gêne).  Madame Alice is the kind of role that you'd think only Bette Davis could get away with in her later years, a stone-hearted female pimp who, by exercising her magnetic charm, entices pretty young men into her vice-sodden den and then guards them with the ferocity of a tiger.  Arletty's best years were behind her by now but her performance as Madame Alice, possibly the greatest female fiend that French cinema ever gave us, proved that the 52-year-old actress was still a force to be reckoned with.

With Arletty firing on all cylinders, the male lead needed to be an actor of comparable talent and charisma to avoid being totally eclipsed or made to resemble a weak-willed fool.  Georges Marchal was eminently up to the job and, well-served by an excellent script from Jean Aurenche and Maurice Blondeau (which is marred only by some over-earnest moralising), has rarely given such an involving and intense performance.  There's a wonderful ambiguity to the relationship between Marchal and Arletty's character, which is subtly emphasised by Philippe Agostini's noir-like cinematography.  Madame Alice clearly has no romantic interest in her prize victim Marceau but there's an unmistakable sexual tension between the two, a bond of mutual dependency so tangible that you can almost see it on the screen.

Madame Alice is more than just a cruel, self-interested dominatrix, revelling in the power she has over her young protégé; there is also something resembling  maternal interest, as if she genuinely believes she is acting for his best interest by making him a career gigolo.  Marchal's devotion to his supposed benefactor is even harder to fathom, and we cannot be sure whether it is the lure of easy money that makes him such a willing victim or a genuine attraction for a woman he knows he can never possess.  Maybe he just imagines her to be a substitute for the mother he never had.  Gibier de potence impresses on many fronts, but, more than anything, it is the relationship between the two contrasting and equally flawed main characters that makes it such a darkly fascinating film.

Film Synopsis

On leaving the orphanage in which he grew up, Marceau Le Guern has difficulty finding gainful employment.  Not long after he is dismissed as a butcher's assistant he encounters the mysterious Madame Alice, an older woman who, seeing he is in difficulty, offers him easy work for good pay.  The 'work' turns out to be posing for pornographic photographs for lonely women, and whilst the prospect disgusts Marceau, he is in no position to turn down the offer.  He then finds he can earn even more money as a gigolo, hired out by Madame Alice to her wealthier clients.  WWII then intervenes and Marceau spends most of the next five years as a prisoner of war.  On his return to France, Marceau intends turning over a new leaf, but Madame Alice's grip on him is too strong.  He is soon resuming his former life and Madame Alice contrives to win for him the position of estate manager to a rich woman, Consuelo.  During his first visit to the latter's family home in the country, Marceau meets and instantly falls in love with a young woman named Dominique.  He is determined to start a new life with Dominique, but Madame Alice is equally resolved to prevent him...