Film Review
Paul Vecchiali is probably the least likeliest director to leap aboard
the psycho-thriller bandwagon that came rumbling into town in the late
1960s, early 1970s, having been set in motion by Michael Powell's
Peeping
Tom (1960), but then Vecchiali was never the most
predictable of filmmakers and his first foray into genre territory is
hardly the most conventional of genre films.
L'Étrangleur was the third
full-length film that Vecchiali directed, although only the second to
be released - after
Les Ruses du
diable (1966). The negatives of his first feature,
Les Petits drames (1961), were
destroyed before prints could be made for commercial exploitation and
the film is now sadly lost.
L'Étrangleur is among
Paul Vecchiali's strangest and most ambiguous films, one that
superficially adheres to the conventions of the classic psycho-thriller
whilst simultaneously, and quite deliberately, subverting them.
The killer is certainly disturbing (Jacques Perrin combines innocence
with a creepy aura of menace that is genuinely chilling) but he is far
from being the sadistic maniac that we find in many similar films of
this era. In fact, instead of being an outright villain he turns
out to be the noblest character in the film, one whose actions (whilst
repugnant) are motivated by a desire to do good, to end the suffering
of those whose lives have become a torment. Émile's
child-like purity sets him apart from the morally depraved world in
which he exists, a world inhabited by treacherous and self-interested
scum that seek to profit from his peculiar form of goodness, like
vultures picking over the entrails of lion kill.
Every time that Émile kills it is as an act of supreme
love. There is scarcely a suggestion of the sexual connotations
that we would expect in a conventional psycho-thriller, just a
compassionate tenderness of the kind we might see in a parent caressing
a child. The sequence in which Émile befriends and
murders a faded actress (Hélène Surgère) has a
poignancy that is genuinely heartrending, and far from shocking us the
killing strikes us as the most merciful of accomplishments.
Recurrent flashbacks to the incident in Émile's childhood that
made him a killer reinforce the impression that he is an innocent,
whose murderous acts stem from a twisted notion of goodness that lies
buried deep within his subconscious. It is the most extreme and
purest form of fetishism - Émile is gratified by killing because
he is convinced that by doing so he is serving humanity, eradicating
pain and distress and bringing relief to those for whom life no longer
has any meaning. If we were to judge Émile by the purity
of his motives we could hardly fail to regard him as a saint.
By contrast, we have no difficulty whatsoever in placing the other two
male protagonists in the drama at other end of the moral
spectrum. First there is the despicable cop Dangret (it is no
accident that his name is an anagram of 'Dragnet'), a shifty
manipulator who is prepared to do anything to see Émile brought
to justice. Unable or unwilling to achieve his ends by legitimate
means, Dangret resigns as a police inspector and embarks on a personal
contest against Émile, ultimately delivering a far more barbaric
form of justice than even the modern French state would ever
countenance (at the time the film was made, murder was still punishable
by guillotine). Dangret's grubby amorality sets him apart from
both the weirdly saintly Émile and the thoroughly odious
pilferer who empties the handbags of the strangler's victims,
appropriately named the Jackal. The fourth player in the drama, a
casually slotted in femme fatale named Anna, is the most unfathomable -
her motives are totally unclear and yet she plays a crucial role in
Émile's redemption and ultimate martyrdom.
As you would expect from an auteur of Vecchiali's standing,
L'Étrangleur transcends its
borrowed genre trappings and emerges as a profound and desperately
bleak commentary on the mores of its time. It is a film that
mockingly encapsulates pretty well everything that was wrong with the
1970s, in particular the exploitation phenomenon and public appetite
for cheap lurid sensationalism, the most obvious signs of a wider
decline in moral standards. By casting a serial killer as
compassionate angel of death, Vecchiali leaves us thinking that it is
society as a whole that is mired in perversity and in danger of
becoming addicted to the basest forms of gratification, not a few rogue
individuals out on a killing spree.
L'Étrangleur is by far the
most unsettling of Vecchiali's films, not because it resorts to tawdry
thriller tactics but because of what it has to say about the time in
which it was made, and by the end of it the stench of moral decay is
overwhelming. The more closely you examine the 1970s, the more
sick you feel.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Paul Vecchiali film:
Femmes femmes (1974)
Film Synopsis
As a child, Émile is walking through the streets after dark when
he encounters a stranger. The latter takes his white woollen
scarf and uses it to strangle an attractive young woman. This
incident has a profound effect on the young Émile, to the extent
that when he is a grown man he re-enacts the same murder over and over
again, choosing as his victims women who have grown tired of
life. Simon Dangret, the police inspector investigating the
murders, poses as a journalist in the hope of luring the killer into a
trap. A young woman named Anna approaches Dangret and offers to
help him by acting as bait, but he prefers to work alone.
Meanwhile, a thief named the Jackal has begun to profit from Emile's
murders, helping himself to the possessions of the dead women after
each killing. When Émile and Dangret finally meet, the
strangler insists that he is acting from pure motives and is not
murdering the women for their jewels or money. When he discovers
that Dangret is a cop, Emile feels betrayed and realises he has a
dangerous enemy. Anna is about to become an unwitting pawn in
their final encounter. Having resigned from his position, Dangret
brings Émile and the Jackal together, so that one will destroy
the other...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.