L'Homme de la Jamaïque (1950)
Directed by Maurice de Canonge

Film Review

In the 1940s, Jacques Mervel was one of the most famous characters in popular French fiction, a mysterious womaniser and adventurer, very much in the James Bond mould, but with the exception that he was a career criminal rather a secret agent.  The character was created by Robert Gaillard, one of France's most prolific writers, and his far-fetched exploits were first brought to the screen by Maurice de Canonge in L'Homme de la Jamaïque, adapted from the first of Gaillard's ten popular Mervel novels.  De Canonge was well-suited to direct the film as he had already helmed a number of hard-boiled crime films and had scored a massive hit with his spy thriller Mission spéciale (1946).  Strongly influenced by American film noir, de Canonge's crime films were the precursor to not only similar American-style B-movie thrillers, such as the Lemmy Caution series, but also French film noir as an entity in its own right, to which the director made one notable contribution - Interdit de séjour (1955).

Set mostly in Morocco, L'Homme de la Jamaïque captures the exotic feel of Gaillard's lurid novels and in Pierre Brasseur it has the perfect screen manifestation of the colourful rogue Jacques Mervel.  It is a part that suits the actor so well that you wonder why he never returned to the role afterwards.  The reason for this may possibly have been down to the film's failure to attract an audience, which is mostly attributable to Jacques Companeez's lousy adaptation of the original novel.  Companeez had previously done a fine job of scripting some earlier crime films - Pierre Chenal's L'Alibi (1937) and Robert Siodmak's Pièges (1939) - but his script for L'Homme de la Jamaïque is a complete mess, with a plot that barely hangs together and characters that are little more than thinly sketched B-movie ciphers.

The film is at least partly deemed by its cast, which includes some fine characters actors - Louis Seigner and Marcelle Géniat - and a talented newcomer Véra Norman, a young actress whose career sadly did not live up to the promise she shows here as Brasseur's unlikely love interest.  The most unexpected name in the cast list is Georges Tabet, a surprisingly good choice for a criminal type straight from the Peter Lorre school of spineless villainy.  Just over a decade before this, Tabet had been one of France's most prolific entertainers, making a fine comedy duo with Jacques Pills - they can be seen together in Jean Boyer's Prends la route (1936).  Poorly scripted and directed with only a fraction of the flair that de Canonge shows on his more inspired crime films, L'Homme de la Jamaïque would be easy to overlook were it not for its colourful performances and a few impressively staged action sequences.

Film Synopsis

Jacques Mervel, a notorious smuggler, is organising a lucrative gunrunning operation in Tangier when he runs into Vicky, a young woman hired to take care of a wheelchair-bound old woman Madame Milleris who happens to be one of Mervel's associates.  Mistaking Jacques for an antiques dealer, Vicky finds herself drawn to him and he is equally taken with her, her innocence and purity making a welcome change from the nastiness and treachery Jacques finds in most people he has to deal with.  When Vicky learns the truth about Jacques she leaves him and he focuses his efforts on concluding his business deal.  Betrayed by his underworld associates, Jacques narrowly escapes from Morocco with his life, but when he visits a doctor friend of his in Paris he learns he has contracted leprosy.  Without delay, he returns to Tangier having sent a farewell note to Vicky, his one thought being to have his revenge on the men who betrayed him.  When she hears of Jacques's terrible fate, Vicky decides she must go after him...