Le Chat et la souris (1975)
Directed by Claude Lelouch

Film Review

The 1970s was the decade of the French film policier, so it's hardly surprising that Claude Lelouch would pass up the opportunity to clamber aboard this audience-grabbing bandwagon and give it his own inimitable makeover.  After La Bonne année (1973), now considered one of his best films, the director turned his hand to Le Chat et la souris, a mischievous take on the popular whodunit genre with enough twists and turns to please any murder mystery addict.  Lelouch's penchant for the absurd and a decidedly warped sense of humour prevent this from being a routine thriller, and the result is easily one of his more entertaining and surprising films.

In what was to be her cinema swansong, Michèle Morgan bows out in suitably glamorous style, apparently pushing a badly aged Jean-Pierre Aumont to his death in the film's cheeky opener, before being hounded to distraction by Serge Reggiani (a cop who has the tenacity of Lieutenant Columbo and temperament of a Rottweiler) and his trusty sidekick Philippe Léotard.  Vernon Dobtcheff earned his place in film history as the man who shot Madame Morgan in the back in her last cinema role.  Fortunately, this was not quite the end for the lady in question.  Michèle Morgan made cameo appearances in a few films after this (including one in Lelouch's subsequent Robert et Robert), and finally took her leave in a number of made-for-television films in the 1990s.

It is hardly overstating things to say that Le Chat et la souris's main asset is its mind boggling cast.  Morgan may have already decided to give up film acting but there's no sign of disillusionment with her art here - she is as magnetic and iconic as ever as the lustrous lady of mystery, the ice-cold blonde who leads Reggiani a merry dance as he does his audition piece for Peter Falk's replacement (he even brings along his own pet pooch, a totally lethal Belgian sheepdog).  After a protracted lull in his acting career, Reggiani was now in the throes of a massive comeback and is as riveting to watch as his glamorous co-star - indeed it is the sparky interplay between these two extraordinary actors that is the film's chief delight.  No less enjoyable is Reggiani's buddy rapport with up-and-coming talent Philippe Léotard, an actor who would make a huge impact on French cinema in the 1980s, notably in the hard-boiled policier genre.  Some of the film's most authentic scenes are those which, apparently improvised, show Reggiani and Léotard enjoying each other's company, forming as memorable a duo of maverick cops as you can care to name.

A Claude Lelouch film would not be a Claude Lelouch film without at least one attention grabbing mega-indulgence, and Le Chat et la souris has one of the best.   To break Morgan's alibi Reggiani undertakes three high-speed journeys across Paris - by car, by motorbike and by speedboat - and in each case Lelouch places the camera on the front of the vehicle in question and subjects his audience to one of the most exhilarating joyrides cinema has given us.  In plot terms, it is purely gratuitous - no way is it remotely possible that Michèle Morgan could bomb her way down the Champs-Élysées at sixty miles an hour on a motorbike in the rush-hour (although I'd pay good money to see her try) - but it allows Lelouch to concentrate his madness in contained spurts instead of infecting the entire film.  If you suffer from motion sickness, just close your eyes and listen to the running commentary provided by Reggiani and Léotard - this offers an amusing insight into the mentality of the Parisian cop (what a revelation it is to find that they are there to enforce the law, not obey it).

Anticipating the advent of néo-polar (France's own particularly cynical kind of political thriller), Lelouch takes a swipe at the governing class with a Machiavellian subplot in which high-up political intervention hijacks a perfectly straightforward murder and turns it into anarcho-syndicalist plot to rid France of its most well-heeled citizens.  This is the icing on the cake - a daft satirical digression built around a superb repeat gag in which various individuals (a loose-canon cop, his more compliant replacement and finally an arrested criminal) are successively press-ganged into serving the government's anti-socialist, pro-bourgeois agenda.  Michèle Morgan and Serge Reggiani are not the only ones playing cat and mouse in this quirky thriller - behind the scenes a much bigger game is in play, one involving far higher stakes and a far less certain outcome.  If Jean-Pierre Aumont's killing was meant to symbolise France's demise in the mid-1970s the film's resolution is savagely ironic.

Film Synopsis

Madame Richard entertains the prospect of murdering her husband when he, a successful architect, begins an extra-marital affair with an actress of erotic movies.  Fortunately for her, she has an apparently cast-iron alibi when her husband is killed at their house just outside Paris - she was at the cinema and could hardly be expected to undertake the two hour round trip that would have been necessary for her to commit the murder.  Police superintendent Lechat isn't so sure and, convinced that Madame Richard did indeed shoot dead her husband, he sets out to break her alibi, without success.  Since several valuable paintings were stolen from the Richards' house at the time of the murder it looks likely that the architect was killed by burglars.

Another possibility is that Richard may have committed suicide, but Lechat rejects this hypothesis and, assisted by his loyal subordinate Pierre Chemin, he persists in hounding his prime suspect, Madame Richard.  Not long after she receives a cheque from her insurance company for the theft of the paintings, Madame Richard is abducted by two masked men and forced to hand over the insurance money.  Lechat's investigation soon brings him into conflict with his superiors, who have him taken off the case so that they can make Richard's death and his wife's subsequent abduction look like the work of left-wing extremists.  Even in retirement, Lechat refuses to give up the case.  Still certain of Madame Richard's guilt, he sets out to demolish her alibi once and for all...