Film Review
When he started making films in the 1920s, Dimitri Kirsanoff readily
earned himself a place amongst the Parisian avant-garde that included
Jean Epstein and Abel Gance. His early films - notably
Ménilmontant
(1926) and
Brumes d'automne (1929) - are
sublime examples of cinematic expression, but in common with most of
his avant-garde contemporaries, Kirsanoff ended up prostituting his
talents for commercial cinema - "not to live", as Abel Gance once
famously put it, "but so as not to die."
Le Crâneur was one of
Kirsanoff's last films, made just a few years before his death in
1957. It's about as formulaic as a French film of this era could
be - a classic polar or French film noir - but Kirsanoff's
inventiveness and flair for visual drama ensure that it is far from
mundane.
Le Crâneur takes a
fairly routine plot - of the kind you've already seen in over a hundred
American films noirs - and gives it an original spin by employing a
succession of flashbacks whereby the story is told in three parts from
the perspective of the three main characters. This was not the
first film to employ this narrative structure - Claude Autant-Lara had
used it very succesfully on his recent film
Le Bon Dieu sans confession
(1953) - but it works well and makes
Le
Crâneur more involving than it might have been had it gone
for the linear approach. It also adds a measure of depth to the
three protagonists, who would otherwise struggle to be more than the
familiar noir archetypes.
Even when his career started to take a nosedive not long
after this film, Raymond Pellegrin was always
a compelling proposition, whether he was playing the good guy or the
villain. In
Le Crâneur he
is the good guy (well, good-ish), a
lugubrious stuntman with a fatal attraction for the ladies and a nice
line in petty fraud involving pins. It is Paul Frankeur who gets
to play the villain, although the extent of his villainy isn't apparent
until the very end of the film and it is with his creepily avuncular
charm that he lures an unsuspecting Pellegrin into his nefarious and
ultimately murderous affairs. Frankeur and Pellegrin are evenly
matched, both superb at playing ambiguous characters in a way that
makes them appear both sympathetic and sinister. There is one
scene in this film when Frankeur is at his most terrifying, his
distinctive features arranging themselves into a mask of pure satanic
delight as he - (to say any more would be to give away too much of the
plot).
No self-respecting film noir is complete without a smouldering femme
fatale and
Le Crâneur
spoils us with two of the best: Dora Doll and Marina Vlady, a startling
contrast of female pulchritude. Next to Doll's earthiness, Vlady
appears more ethereal than unusual and has rarely looked more alluring
- you'd never guess that she had only just achieved stardom through her
role in André Cayatte's
Avant
le déluge (1954). Doll gets the best lines (hers
being by far the most interesting character in the film) but Vlady
steals the show with her rendition of
La
Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, a song written for the film by the
legendary Georges Brassens.
Le Crâneur is a modest
offering compared with Dimitri Kirsanoff's early cinematic achievements
but it delivers what any decent film noir should - a twisted intrigue
that is prevented from being stale and predictable by the artistry of
its composition.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
One-time stuntman Philippe finds his goose well and truly cooked when his
girlfriend Betty Ball is found dead in a telephone kiosk at the chic Pigalle
nightclub where she works as a dancer,
Le Toboggan. Philippe
is the obvious suspect for the murder and, unable to furnish an alibi, he
is likely to be picked up by the police at any moment. The nightclub's
owner, Monsieur Georges, offers to help Philippe escape arrest, assisted
by his talented cabaret singer Juliette.
These three end up in Georges's private residence, and as they wait a suitable
moment for Philippe to make his getaway, they piece together the bizarre
sequence of events that led to Betty's surprising death. It isn't long
before Juliette realises that Georges is the real killer. It seems
that he has contrived the most ingenious plot to have Philippe arrested for
murder, thereby drawing attention away from his drugs trafficking operations.
The ruse may have worked - if Juliette hadn't fallen in love with Philippe...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.