Entre onze heures et minuit (1949)
Directed by Henri Decoin

Film Review

Although Entre onze heures et minuit was presumably intended as a homage to the American film noir thriller, and does imitate the classic noir style to great effect, you could easily mistake it for a very cheeky parody of the genre.  This is evident in the opening sequence which, rather than draw a discrete veil over the plot's biggest contrivance (the fact that the main protagonist is the exact double of a man whose murder he is investigating), instead draws our attention to it with as much subtlety as a brass band on roller skates.   The main problem that Henri Decoin faced when making the film was knowing that his leading man, Louis Jouvet, had very recently starred in another French thriller in which he played a dual role, Jean Dréville's Copie conforme (1947).  Rather than hire another actor to avoid a nasty case of déjà vu, Decoin and his screenwriting team came up with a comedy opening which attempts to defend the indefensible, essentially by saying that if Edward G. Robinson can get away with it - in The Whole Town's Talking (1935) - so can Louis Jouvet.  Methinks the lady doth protest too much... 

The comedy teaser aside, Entre onze heures et minuit is actually one of Henri Decoin's better films, certainly one of his more stylish thrillers and a very respectable example of 1940s French film noir.  Employing slanted camera angles, overlapping dissolves and high contrast photography with almost wanton abandon, the film looks like a perfect pastiche of American film noir, but it also has a distinctly Gallic feel to it. The characters are not as hard-bitten or as cynical as their American counterparts, and the moral boundary between the good guys and the villains is more rigidly defined.  There is also a great deal of humour, although much of this is not readily apparent on a first viewing (when the spectator is too busy trying to untangle the labyrinthine plot to look for jokes).  Of course, some of the humour is shamelessly blatant, such as the haute couture fashion exhibition, in which wealthy patrons bid for outfits with such names as "I shot down a cop", before being held up by armed gangsters.  Stylistically, the film sometimes bears an uncanny resemblance to Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), which was released a few months after this film (Reed, like Decoin, was presumably heavily influenced by American film noir).     
   
As in all of his films, Louis Jouvet dominates the proceedings with his familiar brooding presence and an unbeatable charisma.  Skilfully underplaying the comedy (almost to the point that you need a microscope to see it), Jouvet gives a compelling performance which masterfully conceals his character's intentions.  It is natural to suppose that by impersonating the gangster Vidauban, Inspector Carrel risks being diverted from the straight and narrow, but the moral authority that Jouvet brings to his portrayal suggests otherwise.  The main element of suspense in the film is how Jouvet's character will emerge at the end of his tortuous adventure.  The outcome is both satisfying and surprising, very different from what you might have expected in an American film noir.  It is interesting that in Jouvet's principled crime investigator we can already see the origins of the maverick fictional cops of later decades, Harry Callahan and his illustrious rule-book-hating ilk.

Film Synopsis

It was between the hours of eleven o'clock at night and midnight that the crime took place.  Jérôme Vidauban, a trafficker wanted by the police, is shot dead in a Paris subway by an unknown assassin.  Inspector Carrel is tasked with investigating the killing and is surprised to discover that he is the exact double of the murder victim.  Whilst searching Vidauban's home, Carrel is mistaken for the crook by a suspicious-looking individual who demands a large sum of money from him.  This gives the inspector an idea.  He will use his resemblance to the dead man to inveigle his way into the company of his erstwhile nefarious associates.

Carrel manages to deceive not only Vidauban's former mistress, Florence, but also another hoodlum named Victor who is preparing a robbery at a fashion house belonging to the dead man's most recent lover, Lucienne.  The latter is the only person who appears not to have been taken in by Carrel's deception.  Lucienne is not only an incredibly alluring woman, whose charms Carrel finds hard to resist. She also turns out to be a useful ally in the inspector's attempts to organise the arrest of Vidauban's gang, but it soon becomes apparent that she has her own motives for doing so...