Le Fauve est lâché (1959)
Directed by Maurice Labro

Film Review

For most of his career, director Maurice Labro was content with turning out routine comedies such as Boniface somnambule (1951), Monsieur Leguignon lampiste (1952) and La Route du bonheur (1953), films that would doubtless have passed into obscurity were it not for the presence of some iconic actors.  Occasionally, Labro did rise above the mediocre, and it was with his forays into thriller territory that he most distinguished himself.  Of these, Le Fauve est lâché is the most impressive, a slick, relentlessly paced polar, of the kind that had become enormously popular in France by the end of the 1950s.  A violent film for its time, with some fleeting bursts of sadism, it anticipates the grittier, more action-oriented thrillers of the following decade.

Scripted by one of France's leading crime writers, Frédéric Dard, (with some help from debutant scenarist Claude Sautet), Le Fauve est lâché was a box office hit (attracting an audience of 2.5 million) which cemented the popularity of its lead actor, Lino Ventura.  The latter first made his name as a wrestler before he was reluctantly manoeuvred into an acting career by Jacques Becker for his landmark thriller Touchez pas au grisbi (1954).  Looking every inch a seasoned habitué of le Milieu, Ventura readily became closely associated with the French film policier, and would spend most of his career playing hardened criminals or driven detectives, usually with the spectator firmly on his side.  It was as a maverick agent in Bernard Borderie's Le Gorille vous salue bien (1958) that Ventura became a star of French cinema, and in Labro's thriller, the next film he appeared in, he takes on a virtually identical role.  The film's title - which translates as The Wildcat is Unleashed - was highly apt.

Le Fauve est lâché deserves to be considered a minor classic of its genre, but it does have one glaring deficiency: a formulaic plot which is almost identical with that of Labro's previous film, Action immédiate (1957), the first of his Coplan action-thrillers.  Some top secret defence documents have gone amiss and it is Ventura's job (whether he wants it or not) to recover them.  Some ruthless hoodlums (including an implausibly butch Jess Hahn) are after the precious papers and are willing to resort to any means, even kidnapping Ventura's infant son, to recover them.  Originality is evidently in short supply on the narrative front but, presumably inspired by his more talented contemporaries, Labro grabs it with both hands and somehow turns it into a wonderfully entertaining noir rollercoaster, with Ventura at his pugnacious best.

The film gets off to a cracking start, with our friend Lino coerced by his former security services buddies into playing James Bond one last time.  Ventura's first task is to gain the confidence of a crime boss Paul Frankeur, another actor who excels in this kind of hard-boiled crime romp.  When Frankeur is unceremoniously dumped at the film's midpoint, the pace suddenly picks up and before we know it Ventura is waging a personal war against the security services and a gang of American gangsters, the kind who like to pass their time throwing people off cliffs.  This takes in a spectacular set-piece chase across Étretat on the Normandy coast, which includes a breakneck chase through some caves that feels like more than a passing nod to Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949).

The direction is brisk and confident, the production values hard to fault, with Pierre Petit's brooding cinematography and Georges Van Parys's ominous score adding to the tension and drama, in classic noir style.  The film tapers off a little towards the end as the plot starts to run out of mileage and credibility, but, with Ventura still firing on all cylinders, ably supported by a cast that includes the stunning Estella Blain, it is unlikely to send you to sleep.  Au contraire, Le Fauve est lâché is one of the liveliest and most competently realised French thrillers of the decade.  Formulaic it may be, but dull it certainly isn't.

Film Synopsis

Once a gangster and secret services operative, Paul Lamiani now leads a respectable life as a restaurateur and family man.  One day, he is contacted by his former employers in the DST and invited to get in touch with one of his erstwhile criminal associates, Raymond Maroux.  It appears the latter has in his possession some highly sensitive stolen defence documents which he is no doubt prepared to sell to the highest bidder.  Paul has no choice but to risk his life retrieving the stolen documents, but his mission takes a nasty turn when Maroux is murdered...