Interdit de séjour (1955)
Directed by Maurice de Canonge

Film Review

Such was the impact that Jacques Becker's noir thriller Touchez pas au grisbi made on its release in France in 1954 that Albert Simonin, the author of the book it was based on, suddenly found himself in great demand.  One of the pre-eminent writers of popular crime fiction of the day, Simonin brought a grim authenticity to his crime novels that translated well to the big screen and allowed French cinema to develop its own kind of film noir, one that was noticeably different from its more stylised and formulaic American counterpart.  Interdit de séjour was just one of many films policiers that Simonin put his name to, a slick little thriller that reworks the familiar noir motifs into a likeable hard-boiled entertainment - one that deals adroitly with some important concerns of the day - juvenile delinquency and the shortcomings of the French judiciary.

In a nutshell, Interdit de séjour is effectively a halfway house between Becker's gritty gangster film and André Cayatte's bleak conscience stirrer Nous sommes tous des assassins (1952).  It is about a sympathetic everyman type who, through no fault of his own, falls foul of the injustices of the French legal system and as a result finds himself caught in a downward spiral, preyed on both by ruthless career criminals and some equally despicable supposed agents of the law.  It is classic film noir, but with a brutal contemporary twist that makes it far more interesting than it might have been.   The film was directed, with an obvious eye on Becker's film, by Maurice de Canonge, a journeyman director who enjoyed some success in the policier genre late in his career.  Prior to this, de Canonge had had a massive hit with the wartime spy thriller Mission spéciale (1946) and also turned in an engaging mining melodrama Grisou (1938).

Interdit de séjour's main attraction is its first rate cast, which includes a brace of actors who would become very closely associated with French film noir of the '50s and '60s - Daniel Cauchy, Paul Frankeur and Robert Dalban.  As the morally dubious police chiefs Frankeur and Dalban make the greatest impression and effectively create a template for those soulless law enforcers that would stalk many a later French film noir - heartless automata pursuing their idea of justice with no thought to the human consequences, and thereby redirecting our sympathies towards the criminals they are hell-bent on crushing.  At an early stage in his career, Michel Piccoli also makes a strong impression as a fully fledged noir hoodlum, and Joëlle Bernard makes a stunning albeit somewhat characterless femme fatale.

It is the casting of Claude Laydu in the lead role, Pierre, that is the film's most inspired touch.  Best known for playing the country priest who has his faith tested to destruction in Robert Bresson's Journal d'un curé de campagne (1951), Laydu was ideally suited to play the sympathetic loser and as the innocent good guy who gets himself caught in the deadly crossfire between the Parisian underworld and the capital's unscrupulous cops he looks like a lamb happily ambling its way across a well-stocked minefield.  The true horror of Pierre's predicament only hits home in the film's final sequence which, looking like a scene from the Apocalypse, serves up one of the most horrific endings of any French film noir of this era.

At a time when so many French films policiers were just pale imitations of Becker's landmark film, Interdit de séjour stands out from the crowd because it presents an all too plausible scenario in the most vivid terms, deftly combining realism and the familiar noir tropes with just a smattering of dark humour (Simonin's trademark) .  Yes, the harmonica theme is a deliberate rip-off from Touchez pas au grisbi, but that's as far as the similarities go.  This second screen offering from Albert Simonin may not be as well known as his first but it introduced some essential elements into French film noir, which Jean-Pierre Melville would pick up and develop in his subsequent noir offerings, beginning with Bob le flambeur (1956).

Film Synopsis

Pierre Ménard is a young man who makes an honest living working in a Paris jewellery.  Unfortunately, he gets into bad company when he falls for Suzie, an attractive young woman who, unbeknown to him, works as a hostess in a sleazy Pigalle nightclub.  It so happens that Suzie's brother Polo is mixed up with a gang of crooks who intend raiding the jewellers' workshop where Pierre works.  The raid goes badly wrong and Polo is arrested whilst trying to escape from the police.  Before he knows it, Pierre is dragged into court and wrongly charged with involvement in the jewel theft.  He is given a one year prison sentence and an order preventing him from staying in Paris for five years.  On his release, the young man finds it impossible to find work and has no choice but to hook up with Polo's criminal associates.  As he does so, he attracts the attention of Inspector Chennier and his superintendent, who put pressure on him to make him a police informer.  When Polo's gang learns that Pierre has betrayed them they are far from pleased.  Someone is about to get very badly hurt...