Identité judiciaire (1951)
Directed by Hervé Bromberger

Film Review

One of the most noticeable and gladly received American imports in France immediately after WWII was the hardboiled crime movie, and in next to no time home-grown filmmakers were turning out French imitations by the cartload, such was the appetite for the nascent film policier phenomenon.  Identité judiciaire is one of the more respectable of these early American-style thriller rip-offs, a meticulously constructed police procedural that gives a modern Gallic twist to the recent spate of realist films noirs being made in Hollywood at the time.  As is common in this thriller sub-genre, the murder mystery is far less important than the slow and arduous process by which the mystery is resolved.

In Identité judiciaire and films of its ilk we can clearly see the origins of all those popular police procedural films and television series that would come to dominate the small and big screens over the next three decades.  Identité judiciaire directly inspired one such series, Les Cinq Dernières Minutes, which ran to 56 episodes on French television from 1958 to 1973.  The central character in this series, Inspecteur Bourrel, was modelled on the film's lead character, Commissaire Basquier, and was played by the same actor, Raymond Souplex.

It is easy to see why Souplex was chosen to effectively reprise his role as the no-nonsense police inspector in Les Cinq Dernières Minutes.  His natural air of authority comes with more than a soupçon of complacency and thuggish deviousness, making his Commissaire Basquier an unpredictable and deeply flawed individual, a refreshing change from the conventional crime-fighting hero.  Basquier's investigation to track down a serial killer gets off to a bad start when his actions directly result in the death of a teenage girl.  Later on, he allows another young woman to fall into the killer's hands because he is too busy going up a blind alley, and then, clearly not one to learn from his mistakes, he puts a third woman in peril when an attempt to corner the killer goes badly awry.  Basquier may get his man in the end, but only by following a long, winding itinerary piled high with corpses.

Although director Hervé Bromberger is better known for his subsequent thriller parody La Bonne Tisane (1958), Identité judiciaire is an altogether more superior film of his, more stylishly photographed and directed with far more flair and imagination.  The film drags a little with its succession of office-bound scenes, but it comes to life with a vengeance when the action moves out onto the streets of Paris.  There's a hair-raising car chase as the narrative accelerates towards its dramatic climax, and the frantic manhunt which closes the drama is flawlessly executed.  Best of all is the shock revelation of the killer's identity - almost guaranteed to make you leap out of your seat in surprise.  It's attention-grabbing jolts like these that allow us to forgive Identité judiciaire its narrative hiccups and you are left wondering why the film (one that spawned one of France's most successful television series) isn't held in the same regard as other notable French thrillers of the 1950s.

Film Synopsis

When 17-year-old Denise runs away from home, the police make haste to find her.  They arrive too late.  She drowns herself in a canal, the third casualty of a dangerous psychopath who drugs his victims and either abandons them or murders them.  As Inspector Basquier begins his investigation a likely suspect emerges - the drugs dealer Petrosino.  The latter frequents a bar run by a young woman named Dora, who is the killer's next victim.  As she regains consciousness in hospital, Dora cannot testify as she has no recollection of the attack.  The drug administered to her by the killer not only paralyses, it also causes memory loss.  Dora recalls some vital clues when she is questioned by the lawyer Berthet, but as she does so she signs her own death warrant...