Le Parfum de la dame en noir (1931)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

Even though Le Parfum de la dame en noir is the immediate sequel to Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (and was made directly after this film), the difference between the two films is striking.  Whilst making the first of these films, Marcel L'Herbier and his team were still struggling with the transition from silent to sound cinema and it's hardly surprising, given the cumbersome nature of the apparatus available to them, that the resulting film feels awkwardly static and airless.  Le Parfum de la dame en noir is a far more dynamic piece, one that is carried along at a brisk pace by some superior camerawork and editing.  The tone is also much lighter, with far more in the way of humour and less of the heavy expressionism that featured in the first film.  The change of location, from a gloomy Gothic mansion and stuffy courtroom to an Art Deco-furnished château on the sunny Riviera accentuates the film's stylistic and tonal differences.  It's far from being a return to L'Herbier's glory years of the 1920s, but what we do get is a slick, pacey little thriller in which the director convinces us he had at last got to grips with sound cinema.

This is not the first adaptation of Gaston Leroux's famous crime novel - Maurice Tourneur took that honour with his 1914 version.  Since, there have been several other adaptations, the most recent being the one directed by Bruno Podalydès in 2005.  Podalydès's film is fun but virtually incomprehensible, and it is on the latter front (if no other) that it is surpassed by L'Herbier's better scripted version.  Of course, the main selling point of L'Herbier's film is Joseph Rouletabille portrayed as the bionic man by Roland Toutain, a dare devil actor for whom the word 'risk' apparently had no meaning (he ended up with an amputated leg).  Toutain's gymnastics in Le Mystère de la chambre jaune made him an overnight star and his entrance in that film's sequel has to be seen to be believed.  Not for Toutain the mundane chore of opening a door and walking through it, oh no.  Much more stylish to do a cartwheel and leap feet-first through a windowpane.  Toutain's penchant for suicidal acrobatics is well-utilised by L'Herbier (making you wonder how much he was paying out in insurance) and some of the stunts are so impressive you'd swear some camera trickery was involved (it wasn't - Toutain did all his stunts for real).

As in the preceding film, Roland Toutain is the one bright spot on an  otherwise pretty lacklustre acting front.  Huguette Duflos's performance is laughably theatrical but here her arm waving histrionics are somewhat less out of place than they were on the more strait-laced Mystère de la chambre jaune.  With Léon Belières now playing Sainclair as a sympathetic buffoon he proves to be a more effective sidekick to Toutain, and there's a wicked cunning to the casting of Marcel Vibert (who played the villain in the first film) as an obviously made up oldster.  The weird cast dynamics, dubious acting talent and inherent absurdity of Leroux's novel meant that Le Parfum de la dame en noir lent itself naturally to comedy, and it's surprising it didn't end up as an outright farce.  Toutain should have quit when he was ahead; instead of bowing out gracefully in this likeable L'Herbier romp he was persuaded to reprise the role of Rouletabille one more time, falling flat on his face in Steve Sekely's pretty forgettable Rouletabille aviateur (1932).

Film Synopsis

On the day that Mathilde Stangerson and Robert Darzac finally get married, the journalist Joseph Rouletabille makes a terrible discovery: Mathilde's first husband Frédéric Larsan is still alive!  Realising that the Darzacs are in the greatest of danger, Rouletabille hastens to the château in the South of France where they are to spend their honeymoon.  The journalist is just in time to prevent Larsan from abducting Mathilde, but it soon becomes clear that the criminal is residing at the château under a false identity.  Before Rouletabille can spring his trap and unmask Larsan a murder is committed...