Film Review
La Bête à l'affût
was the last of four noir-styled crime dramas that director Pierre
Chenal put his name to after his return to France in the
mid-1950s. Before fleeing to Argentina during WWII, Chenal was
well-regarded in France, particularly for his moody dramas which
include the early film noir
L'Alibi (1937) and the
suspenseful thriller
Le Dernier Tournant (1939),
cinema's first adaptation of James M. Cain's novel
The Postman Always Rings Twice.
By the time Chenal resumed his career in France after the war, his
thunder had been stolen by other directors who had cultivated a more
stylish and realistic flavour of film noir - Jules Dassin (
Rififi chez les hommes),
Jacques Becker (
Touchez pas au grisbi) and
Jean-Pierre Melville (
Bob le flambeur).
Chenal's final noir offerings looked somewhat bland and dated in
comparison and attracted far less attention, but they are well worth
rediscovering.
Chenal's noir swansong,
La
Bête à l'affût (1959) is one of the
director's most pessimistic films and makes a companion-piece of sorts
to his earlier
La Foire aux chimères
(1946), his one unequivocal masterpiece. In both films the main
protagonist appears to suffer from a severe case of delusion, of the
kind that can only end in tragedy via a startlingly gloomy
finale.
La Bête à
l'affût may lack the dream-like atmospherics and
expressionistic flourishes of the earlier film, but it is still a
haunting piece of cinema, made memorable by its claustrophobic
cinematography and Maurice Jarre's demonically eerie music, which is
almost as frightening as his subsequent score for Georges Franju's
Les Yeux sans visages (1969).
The final sequence, set within the suffocating confines of a lighthouse
amid a misty wasteland, provides a suitably grim and spectacular
conclusion to Chenal's association with film noir.
The film is based on a pot-boiler novel
Forests of the Night by the
American author Day Keene, whose
Joy
House would later be adapted for French cinema by René
Clément as
Les Félins (1960),
another respectable thriller. Michel Audiard apparently had a
hand in the script, not long before he emerged as one of France's most
revered screenwriters and author of such classics as
Les Tontons flingueurs (1960)
and
Le
Pacha (1968). Having played one hard-bitten and
dynamic detective in Chenal's earlier noir tour de force
Rafles sur la ville (1958),
Michel Piccoli returns in an almost identical role, although he
receives third billing after the film's two glamorous stars,
Françoise Arnoul and Henri Vidal. The casting is excellent
and, more than anything, it is the intense and edgy performances from
the three leads that makes the film so darkly compelling. Chenal was
never the showiest of film directors but he had an unerring knack of
getting the best from his performers - providing he was given the right
actors.
At the time, Françoise Arnoul was just about the hottest thing
in French cinema (she had yet to be eclipsed by Bardot), and Chenal was
by no means the first director to exploit her obvious sensual beauty,
which combined a unique gamine charm with the irresistible sex appeal
of an experienced temptress. In one scene, Arnoul casually
removes all of her clothes in full view of her co-star and as she
enjoys a hot shower her fulsome profile is held by the camera for a
full five seconds - it's probably the most unashamedly erotic shot of
any mainstream French film up until this point. Arnoul wasn't
just a stunner, she was also a supremely capable actress, and as the
innocent who apparently falls for a shifty-looking criminal who is
clearly not what he pretends she is as convincing as she is mesmerising.
We can never be entirely sure whether Arnoul's character is just
wilfully blind or whether she is consciously playing the part of the
seductress - there is a strange, dangerous ambiguity to the character
that precisely mirrors that of the one played by Vidal. This is after all
film noir, and obscuring the truth so that we cannot tell black from
white is what the aesthetic is all about.
The film's title
translates as 'The Beast Lying in Wait' - but who is the beast
and who is the prey? Arnoul could just as easily
be the tiger waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting fawn as Vidal.  It's curious that we
should sympathise more with Vidal's character than Arnoul's, even
though his attempts to convince us he is the victim of circumstances
never ring true for a second. Arnoul is presumably won over by
Vidal's rugged masculinity, but we take to him because he fits the bill
of the doomed hero. We know that as soon as he comes within
lassoing reach of Arnoul and places his trust in the sultry siren his
hours are numbered. In one of his better performances, Vidal
brings depth and humanity to his portrayal, so that we are absolutely
compelled to feel for his character - you can't help wondering if the actor
had some inkling that his time was fast running out in real life. Henri Vidal
died suddenly from a heart attack at the age of forty, just six
months after the film's release - how could this not lend a cruel sting
of poignancy to the film's final scene?
© James Travers, Willems Henri 2015
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Next Pierre Chenal film:
L'Assassin connaît la musique... (1963)
Film Synopsis
At the home of Elisabeth Vermont, a wealthy young widow, an auction
is held to benefit the orphans of the local police
department. Not long after the close of the proceedings, the notary Darcet is waylaid
whilst he is carrying the proceeds of the auction, and his attackers
flee with the loot. Inspector Guimard begins an investigation into the
theft, but at the same time he has a more serious crime to deal with: the murder of a
warder by a prisoner named Daniel Morane, who has just escaped from the central prison at
Melun. Injured, Morane takes shelter in Elisabeth's house, where
the kind widow nurses him back to health. Morane tries to
persuade his benefactor that he is a victim of circumstances, wrongly
imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and only killed the warder in self-defence.
Convinced of Morane's innocence and that his feelings for her are genuine, Elisabeth
makes up her mind to help him escape, unaware that things are not quite what they seem...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.