L'Homme mystérieux (1933)
Directed by Maurice Tourneur

Film Review

The same year that he made his impressive period drama Les Deux orphelines (1933) (a remake of D.W. Giffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921)), Maurice Tourneur knocked out this somewhat less well-known work, a medium-length thriller that, with its grim subject matter and moody cinematography, contains the seeds of classic film noir and the modern psycho-thriller. Based on a play by Charles Binet and André de Lorde, L'Homme mystérieux (also referred to as Obsession) is a bleak study in mental derangement which grimly satirises society's attitudes to mental illness in the 1930s. It is one Tourneur's darkest works, its oppressive atmosphere the product of a subtly expressionistic style which the director would develop on his subsequent gangster film Justin de Marseille (1935), Before this, Tourneur had laid the foundation for the police procedural drama in his earlier film Au nom de la loi (1932). Together, these three films seem to offer a prototype for American film noir of the 1940s, containing many of the genre's stylistic and thematic tropes. Tourneur's subsequent output is varied, spanning a range of genres, from grand period pieces such as Volpone (1941) to moralising melodramas like Le Val d'enfer (1943), but he also delivered two other notable noirish dramas: Cécile est morte (1944) and Impasse des deux anges (1948).

Film Synopsis

To resolve a business matter, Pierre needs to have his brother Raymond released from the psychiatric institution to which he was committed after he attacked his wife Louise.  The latter is still convinced that Raymond intends to kill her but agrees, reluctantly, to press for her husband's release.  Against the advice of his doctor, Raymond is allowed to return home to his wife and young son, apparently restored to his erstwhile normality.  Unfortunately, Raymond is anything but well, and his wife's fears are about to be confirmed...