La Carcasse et le tord-cou (1948)
Directed by René Chanas

Film Review

After working with Michel Simon on La Taverne du poisson couronné (1946), director René Chanas teamed up with him immediately afterwards for what would turn out to be his best film, a fair (but hardly distinguished) adaptation of Auguste Bailly's well-known 1923 novel La Carcasse et le Tord-cou.  In the course of a decade, Chanas directed ten films, none of which has stood the test of time well as they are mostly lazy attempts to imitate the work of others.  La Carcasse et le Tord-cou is clearly modelled on Jacques Becker's Goupi mains rouges (1943) and offers a similar oppressive rural setting inhabited by rough-hewn rural grotesques, of which Simon's misanthropic leading character is the roughest example.  Chanas's lack of inspiration and a humdrum adaptation by René Lefèvre (a far better actor than he ever was a writer) prevent the film from having anything like the impact and enduring appeal of Becker's dark rural comedy, but the presence of Simon and a strong supporting cast ensure that it is far from without interest.

Once again, Simon finds himself cast as the cankerous 'vieux schnock', the role he was pretty well saddled ever since he first came to prominence in the early 1930s (then under considerable makeup, now looking distinctly worse for wear).  Despite this, he is not the most vile character the film throws at us - this honour is shared between the two principals, a nasty pair of schemers admirably played by Lucien Coëdel and Michèle Martin.  By now, like Simon, Coëdel was pretty well typecast in villainous roles, although his portrayals were far from lacking in depth and often revealed a sympathetic side, as he showed in Christian-Jaque's Carmen (1943) and André Cayatte's Roger la Honte (1946).  Coëdel brings a similar appealing ambiguity to his character in La Carcasse et le Tord-cou, and we can never be sure whether he is a fool who is easily manipulated into crime by a calculating temptress or is as monstrously black-hearted as he appears. 

There's is no such ambiguity in Michèle Martin's character - Thérésa looks like a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Marlene Dietrich, the deadliest of femmes fatales.  In fact, there is scarcely a character in the film that has even a glimmer of humanity.  Thérésa's father, Casimir (played by a magnificent Louis Seigner) is the grubbiest of the lot, first manoeuvring his daughter into a profitable alliance and later savouring the victory when things play out exactly as he seems to have foreseen.  In fact that's scarcely a single character in this horrible rogue's ensemble who is less mean and threatening than the wild stretch of countryside they inhabit.  Tragically, this was to be Coëdel's final screen role.  On his way back to Paris after the location exteriors were shot, the actor fell from a train and was fatally injured - a sad end to a great career.

Film Synopsis

Tord-Cou is a misanthropic drunken old man who scrapes a living as a country policeman in a little village on the Grand Vau plateau in the remote depths of rural France.  Still in mourning after his wife's funeral, he lives with his daughter Lucie and her husband La Carcasse, a moody, selfish man with whom he fails to get on.  Summoned by a notary, Tord-Cou is surprised to learn that his estranged brother has just died and left him a large quantity of money in his will.  Carried away with his good fortune, the old man buys himself a house and convinces his neighbour Casimir to allow him to marry his beautiful young daughter, Thérésa.  The only attraction that Tord-Cou has for the latter is his newfound wealth, which, given the old man's age and habit of doing rash things like fixing his roof by himself, is soon likely to be hers.  After Lucie's death, La Carcasse finds himself attracted to Thérésa and, having decided to hasten Tord-Cou's departure from this world, she enlists his help in murdering her unwanted husband.  The plan works better than they could have imagined - but it turns out to be just what Casmir had expected...