Le Chien jaune (1932)
Directed by Jean Tarride

Film Review

Two other Maigret films were made in the same year, each with different actors playing the role of the pipe-smoking sleuth.  Shortly, after Le Chien jaune, Pierre Renoir took the part of Maigret in Jean Renoir's La Nuit carrefour (1932).  Then, in Julien Duvivier's La Tête d'un homme (1933), the sublime Harry Baur showed his well-meaning predecessors how the part of Maigret should have been played.  Since then, the great detective has been portrayed by well over a dozen actors in numerous film and television adaptations.

Film Synopsis

Superintendent Maigret finds himself in the Breton fishing port of Concarneau, here to investigate the murder of Mostaguen, a wine dealer who was shot dead one evening on leaving a hostelry.  Assisted in his enquiries by a young and enthusiastic Inspector Leroy, who favours a more scientific approach to his colleague's reliance on intuition, Maigret takes up residence in the Hôtel de l'Amiral.  A popular haunt for the town's bigwigs, the hotel is presently occupied by a journalist named Servières, the foreign trade adviser Le Pommeret and Dr Michoux, who is presently occupied selling some land in the area.  When he is not staying at his secluded villa beside the sea, Michoux visits the hotel to be spend his evenings in the company of an attractive waitress named Emma. 

The local community is as baffled by Mostaguen's seemingly senseless killing as Maigret is, and the climate of fear intensifies when Le Pommeret is poisoned, not long after Servières suddenly goes missing. On both occasions a strange yellow-coated dog was observed in the vicinity, an omen of doom.  Suspecting that Dr Michoux is likely to be the killer's next target, Maigret arranges for him to be taken into police custody.  The mystery begins to unravel when the superintendent discovers a letter in Emma's hand, dictated to her by Michoux.  This sheds light on an illicit smuggling operation in which several patrons of the hotel are somehow implicated.  Now that the crafty culprit has been revealed to him, Maigret is finally in a position to move against him...