Le Triangle de feu (1932)
Directed by Edmond T. Gréville, Johannes Guter

Film Review

One of the progenitors of French film noir, Edmond T. Gréville distinguished himself early in his filmmaking career with this grimly realistic policier, which shows the influence of the early American gangster movie typefied by Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1931).  Using extremely low camera angles, emphatic lighting and rapid editing with perhaps more enthusiasm than the narrative can sensibly justify, Le Triangle de feu contains many of the stylistic tropes we now closely associate with classic film noir, but it also possesses a smattering of the dark eroticism that is peculiar to Gréville's oeuvre.  One high point is a daring train heist which looks oddly reminiscent of the one that features in Jean-Pierre Melville's Un flic (1972), complete with slightly unconvincing model shots.

This was only Gréville's second feature (his first being Le Train des suicidés, released the previous year), and whilst the film has many deficiencies (the characters are poorly developed, the plot somewhat pedestrian, the pacing painfully uneven) it does reveal a director with considerable promise.  A major star of the silent era, Jean Angelo still had a captivating presence in his sound films and is excellent as the saturnine police inspector leading the criminal investigation.  His portrayal of an ambiguous representative of the law has a similar mystique and unpredictability to that seen in Pierre Renoir's Maigret in Jean Renoir's La Nuit du carrefour (1932), another film that was crucial in shaping film noir.  Tragically, this was to be one of Angelo's last screen roles - the actor passed away just under a year after the film's release, aged 58.

Film Synopsis

A gang of crooks succeed in a series of robberies, their signature being triangle which they cut on every safe they break into.  So far they have eluded Inspectors Brémond and Charlet, the two policemen who are charged with bringing them to justice.  A young woman named Irène, found at the scene of the most recent theft, appears to know more than she is prepared to admit.  As they interrogate her, the two policemen fall in love with her.  When one of them is killed, the other vows to avenge his death...