L'Ibis rouge (1975)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

For Jean-Pierre Mocky, France's most truculent and habitually sarcastic film director, the 1970s were a godsend.  The fiercest of agents provocateurs, a man who positively thrives on ridiculing the failings in society, Mocky attacked the decaying carcass of this decade like a wolf descending on a well-stocked chicken coop.  L'Ibis rouge was one of the best and bitterest products of this feeding frenzy, an eccentric black comedy in which Mocky casts his ever-mocking gaze over a fractured, intolerant, dog-eat-dog society in which self is the only thing that matters.  In French cinema, there are few films that are more desperately scathing of the 1970s than this - the only film that comes near to it is Alain Corneau's grimly deadpan Série noire (1979).

Although the film is reputedly based on the novel Knock Three One Two by the American writer Fredric Brown, it bears its author's signature (in bold capital letters) throughout.  The characters are typical Mocky creations, pathetic grotesques who do everything they can to offend our polite, middle class sensibilities but end up snatching our sympathies more effectively than a sweet little meerkat whose mummy and daddy have just been sent away for animal experimentation.  As is typical of Mocky, the object of derision is not the gallery of rogues who are paraded before us, but the society in which they exist, a society that has lost its cohesion, compassion and moral purpose.  It is a bitterly fragmented world that Mocky presents us with, one inhabited by lost souls who stagger blindly through life and prey on one another like something out of a zombie film.
 
What makes L'Ibis rouge a particularly memorable entry in the Mocky canon of sour tasting mirth is that it brings together three of the great Michels of French cinema - Michel Simon, Michel Serrault and Michel Galabru - each elegantly parachuted into a made-to-measure role.  In his late seventies, Simon was ill and virtually unemployable when Mocky offered him what would be his final screen role.  Despite his obvious frailty, Simon repaid the director's trust in him by turning in another captivating performance, achieving the impossible by making his distinctly unprepossessing character - a mythomaniac and casual racist - believable and likeable.  It was a good note to go out on - the actor died just nine days after the film's release in France, on 30th May 1975.  Interestingly, L'Ibis rouge is located on the banks of the canal Saint-Martin in Paris, the very same spot where Jean Vigo had shot L'Atalante forty years previously,  a film in which Simon played one of his most memorable roles.

At the time he made this film, Michel Serrault was best known as a comedy actor.  The role that Mocky gave him, that of an introverted office drone who becomes a compulsive serial killer, was one of the first in which Serrault had the opportunity to demonstrate his worth as a straight, dramatic actor.  It not only allowed Serrault to broaden his repertoire considerably but it also prefigures the more substantial dramatic roles that came his way in the following decade, sinister outsiders whose outward politeness and timidity belie a darker, totally perverse inner nature.  Michel Galabru was equally well-served by the film, in a role that allows him to flex his acting muscles and demonstrate his formidable comedic talents.  As tempting as it is to focus our attention on this tremendous triumvirate of Michels we should not overlook the contributions from Jean Le Poulain and Evelyne Buyle, who do just as much to keep this anarchic juggernaut from skidding off the road.

L'Ibis rouge is not only one of Jean-Pierre Mocky's more enjoyable films, it is also one of his most stylish.  Eric Demarsan's eerie music - oddly evocative of American sci-fi B-movies from the 1950s - gives the film a distinctive atmosphere, emphasising the prevailing mood of alienation suggested by Marcel Weiss's photography.  To say that Jean-Pierre Mocky is an acquired taste is something of an understatement, but those who appreciate his subversive brand of humour will definitely not be disappointed by this film.  The comedy deaths (all over-done and totally unconvincing) are an obvious tongue-in-cheek riposte to the gritty realism that was starting to overtake French thrillers at the time, implying that L'Ibis rouge is as much an attack on the cinema of the 1970s as it is on the declining moral standards of the decade.  The fact that it has a deeper purpose does not prevent it from being a very funny film.  This is vintage Mocky, best served chilled.

Film Synopsis

A serial killer is at large in Paris, in the vicinity of the canal Saint-Martin.  The victims, all attractive young women, have been strangled by someone the police would least suspect - a mild-mannered social security employee named Jérémie.  Meanwhile, drinks salesman Raymond Villiers is desperate to find money to settle his gambling debts with a thug who threatens grievous bodily harm unless he pays up.  In vain, he tries to persuade his wife to hand over her jewels to him in exchange for a quick divorce.  It so happens that Raymond's friend Margos, a Greek restauranteur, is also in need of cash, to buy a retirement home from an aged newspaper vendor, Zizi.  Realising how unfilled his life is, the latter tries to convince everyone that he is the famous Strangler in the hope of getting his name into the papers.  When all his other plans to find money fail, Raymond decides to blackmail Jérémie, having identified him as the killer by the red scarf he wears.  Since he has no cash at his disposal, Jérémie proposes an alternative arrangement.  He offers to kill Raymond's wife for him...