Film Review
In the last decade of his career as a film director, Henri Decoin
pretty well gave up trying to impress the critics and instead
concentrated his efforts on the less challenging and more worthwhile
task of entertaining a mainstream cinema audience. Some would
argue that Decoin never made a good film after
La Vérité sur
Bébé Donge (1952), but whilst it is true that
his last half a dozen or so films have little to commend them, there
are some stylish crowdpleasers to be enjoyed from Decoin's twilight
years. These include the grimly naturalistic polar
Razzia sur la chnouf (1955),
moody period drama
L'Affaire des poisons (1955)
and suspenseful wartime thriller
La Chatte (1958).
Tous peuvent me tuer is also of
interest because of its seemingly insane attempt to turn a classic
heist movie-cum-prison drama into an Agatha Christie whodunnit, with a
large dose of Ealing-style comedy thrown in for no reason whatsoever.
Spectacular plot twists are something we have come to expect from a
good film noir thriller. But spectacular
genre twists? When a film
starts out as
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
and segues into
Le Trou (1960), you don't
expect it to suddenly switch gear and turn into something resembling a
Coen brothers take on
Ten Little
Indians. This presumably wasn't a weird enough stunt for
the film's authors, so they also tossed in an apparently lobotomised
comedy warder (Francis Blanche at his dimmest) and a prisoner governor
who looks as if he would have difficulty running a primary school, let
alone a prison (François Périer at his most
neurotic). As the bodies start to pile up, it's not the
subsequent victims we are concerned for, but the inconvenienced
governor, who clearly hadn't reckoned on having to deal with something
as difficult as a spate of random deaths when he joined the prison
service.
What makes the film so bizarre (to the extent that it probably rates as
Decoin's strangest film) is that, as it switches erratically between
wacky comedy and your standard 1950s-era French thriller, it never
ceases for a second to look like a succulently stylish classic film
noir. Pierre Montazel's beautifully atmospheric cinematography is
consistently moody and oppressive, its use of dramatic shadows and
skewed camera angles being visually effective even when the comedy
starts to take over. Without its soundtrack,
Tous peuvent me tuer would look as
relentlessly sober and grim as any other hard-boiled noir thriller of
this time. In fact, the comedy component of the film seems to be
mostly confined to the contributions from Francis Blanche and
François Périer. It's almost as if Decoin privately
told Blanche and Périer this was a full-throttle comedy, after
leading everyone else involved in the production to believe it was a
straight down-the-line thriller. You wonder why Blanche and
Périer didn't go on to form a successful comedy double act after
this.
The eccentric plot we can blame on André Versini, who not only
scripted the film - with some assistance from Decoin and seasoned
crime-writer Albert Simonin (of
Grisbi
fame) - but also took one of the principal roles, implausibly a
criminal associate of Peter van Eyck, and even less plausibly affianced
to Anouk Aimée. Neither of these other two actors is
well-served by the film - van Eyck was presumably roped in on account
of his cold Germanic looks to give at least a smidgen of credibility to
the hold-up sequence at the start of the film; Aimée just
wanders in and out of the narrative like a forlorn out-of-work actress
desperately waiting for someone to give her a job. Aimée
is a star-in-the-making clearly destined for far better things, and the
same applies to debutants Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean-Claude Brialy,
who crop up briefly - alas too briefly to have any real impact.
The film is positively overloaded with acting talent but only one actor
acquits himself by doing what the script demands of him and no more -
Pierre Mondy.
Tous peuvent me
tuer could have been a genre-hopping disaster, but Decoin's
direction, Montazel's photography and Mondy's solid presence are the
three things that anchor it in reality, or at least a near appoximation
to it. The over-egged comedy does get wearisome in some scenes
but all this is forgiven when Decoin slots in a brilliant visual gag
involving a poster for Robert Bresson's
Un condamné à mort s'est
échappé. The gag definitely would not
have worked with the film's English title:
A Man Escaped. In summing up the film,
it's fair to say that Decoin got away with it - but only just.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Henri Decoin film:
La Chatte (1958)
Film Synopsis
Tony wants nothing more than to marry Isabelle and lead an honest life,
but first he must make some money. This he plans to do by taking
part in a hold-up with four other men, led by Cyril Glad, a tourist
guide. The robbery is a success, and after hiding the stash of
stolen jewels in the base of a statue, the five men break into a
distillery and get themselves wildly drunk, thus providing themselves
with a perfect alibi for the crime they have committed. The five
men are promptly arrested by the police and sent to prison for one
year, exactly as they had planned. But what happens next is
definitely not what was foreseen. One of the five men falls to
his death from a great height. It looks like suicide, but then,
when another of Glad's gang of five is found to have hanged himself in
the prison shower, a pattern begins to emerge. One by one, Tony's
criminal associates meet a grisly end, until he is the only one left
alive. It is now obvious what is going to happen next. Tony
is about to become victim number five. But who is the killer and
what possible motive could he have...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.