L'Homme au chapeau rond (1946)
Directed by Pierre Billon

Film Review

L'Homme au chapeau rond brought to an end one of the most illustrious film careers in French cinema, that of the esteemed actor of stage and screen Jules Auguste Muraire, better known as Raimu.  A few weeks after the film was released, Raimu died in hospital from a heart attack in the course of a routine operation on his leg.  Three years previously, Raimu has been admitted to the Comédie-Française, bringing a temporary suspension to his screen career as he returned to his first love, the stage, with limited success.  In 1946, Raimu returned to the screen with two films - Les Gueux au paradis and L'Homme au chapeau rond - which could have signalled a revival in his flagging career.  In fact, they proved to be his swansong.

L'Homme au chapeau rond is by far Raimu's darkest film, a relentlessly gloomy adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's comparatively little-known novel The Eternal Husband.  The film was directed, with style, by Pierre Billon, a filmmaker with a natural affinity with the darker side of human experience, evidenced by his deeply pessimistic noir-like thriller Jusqu'au dernier (1957).  Billon's penchant for doom-laden atmosphere and expressionistic design comes to the fore in the film's deeply disturbing opening and closing sequences, with Raimu's instantly recognisable silhouette used to chilling effect to set the scene for what is unquestionably one of French cinema's bleakest studies in hatred.

In the course of his career, Raimu played many villains, many characters disfigured by self-loathing or contempt of others.  Here, he inhabits one of his most despicable creations, a man totally and utterly consumed by bitterness, to the extent that he inflicts cruel psychological torture on his little girl and drives her to an early grave.  Not many fathers resort to threatening to hang themselves in order to get their wayward children to stay in and eat their supper.  Raimu's portrayal of an alcoholic father who has allowed hatred for others to completely efface his humanity is harrowing to behold, and yet the actor compels us to keep watching and cling to some vestige of sympathy for him as his character sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of depravity.  The fragile humanity that Aimé Clariond brings to his portrayal of the protagonist's rival and victim merely accentuates the monstrosity of Raimu's character, who ultimately becomes more terrifying than anything in any horror film.  What L'Homme au chapeau rond offers is a stark vision of human nature at its ugliest - one of the grimmest films you are ever likely to see.

Film Synopsis

Shortly after the death of his wife, Nicolas is shocked to discover that he is not the biological father of their infant daughter, Liza.  It appears that the real father is an old acquaintance of his, a man named Michel.  In an attempt to coax a confession from Michel that he had an affair with his wife, Nicolas begins stalking him.  As Michel begins to realise the truth he is appalled that his daughter should be in the hands of such a vile person as Nicolas and hastily arranges for her to be placed with a foster family.  When Nicolas refuses to visit her, Liza falls ill and dies.  A short while later, Nicolas seeks Michel's help in securing the hand in marriage of a 17-year-old girl.  Aware that Nicolas would make the worst of husbands, Michel does his best to thwart the marriage.  One evening, Nicolas visits Michel in his lodgings, intent on murder...