Film Review
Le Trio infernal marked an
auspicious directorial debut for Francis Girod and proved to be one of
the most controversial French films of the 1970s. An outlandish
yet supremely stylish black comedy, it provoked a fierce reaction in
the French press, with some commentators almost spitting blood in moral
outrage at the film's apparent depravity. The fact that the film
featured two of French cinema's most high-profile actors of the
time, Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider, merely fuelled the
controversy. The film's notoriety stemmed largely from its most
shocking sequence - the one in which the main protagonists dispose of
two naked bodes in a bath of acid. With few, if any, concessions
to good taste, Girod goes so far as to show the bodies at their various
stages of decomposition and follows this up with a protracted piece of
farce in which the killers empty the gory contents of the baths with a
soup ladle and bucket. Not what you might call cosy family
viewing.
Fantastic as it may seem,
Le Trio
infernal is not a work of fiction but is in fact closely based
on a real-life case. In 1934, Georges Sarret was guillotined for
his litany of crimes, protesting his innocence (in spite of some
incontrovertible evidence against him) right up to the very end.
The film spares us this grim final chapter in Sarret's life and instead
concludes with a tongue-in-cheek happy ending. If, as some would
have us believe, marriage is the closest thing to Hell on Earth, then
perhaps Sarret does get his just deserts in the end. (Just
imagine all those fun evenings when his wife runs a bath for him.)
One of the things which most shocked cinema audiences at that time was
the spectacle of Romy Schneider playing a nymphomaniac murderess. For
several years, the actress had struggled to rid herself of her
association with the role of Sissi (Elisabeth of Bavaria), a
sugar-sweet character she had played in a series of films in the
1950s. It is reported that Schneider's primary motivation for
appearing in
Le Trio infernal
was to lay to rest her Sissi persona so that she would be free to move
on and extend her repertoire. If this is the case, she certainly
succeeded. Schneider's portrayal of the amoral killer
Philomène is one of her darkest and most brilliant creations,
not merely a monster, but a tragic and complex character whose perverse
acts are the product of intense personal traumas.
If Romy Schneider is the Devil's handmaiden in this film, then her
co-star Michel Piccoli is the Devil himself. In one of his most
outrageous - and, it must be said, entertaining - performances, Piccoli
relishes every moment of his character's macabre exploits and emerges as
the very personification of evil. The actor's seductive charms
have rarely been used to such diabolic ends; this is a performance to
savour. Piccoli inhabits the part of the villainous Georges
Sarret so thoroughly and so convincingly that he chills the blood in
virtually every scene, to the extent that he could give most of
cinema's other great horror icons a pretty good run for their
money.
Le Trio infernal
is pretty sick, but we should not lose sight of the fact that what it
depicts is a stratum of society (the French bourgeoisie immediately
after WWI) that is mired in its own sickening decadence and moral
vacuity. If the film shocks us, then we probably deserve to be
shocked.
© James Travers 2005
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Next Francis Girod film:
La Banquière (1980)
Film Synopsis
After serving with distinction in the First World War, Georges Sarret now
makes a respectable living as a lawyer in the town of Marseille. Aware
that his mistress Philomène Schmidt is about to deported back to her
native Germany, he finds her a husband, Villette, who obliges her by dying
within a month of the wedding. Georges then invites Philomène's
sister Catherine over to France so that he can marry her to another old man
and pick up a nice windfall when he drops dead not long afterwards.
It would seem that Georges and his two German mistresses have hit upon a
sure-fire way to get rich.
Unfortunately, Georges's accomplice, Marcel Chambon, and his mistress, Noémie,
see through his little scheme and try to extort money from him. Georges
has no alternative but to kill the two of them and dissolve their bodies
in sulphuric acid. He then hires another man to pass himself off as
Chambon so that he can get his hands on all of his personal assets.
The success of these gruesome criminal exploits quickly goes to the heads
of the infernal trio and they are soon planning their next money-making scam.
Georges begins by insuring Catherine's life with five different insurance
companies, and then finds a woman of her age, Magali, who is likely to die
from tuberculosis in the very near future. It is left to Catherine
to hasten Magali's demise, by getting her to lead the most debauched life.
Unfortunately, things do not go quite according to plan. It is Catherine
who ends up dying in an accident, to the advantage of Georges and her sister
who are now so rich that they can give up crime altogether...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.