Le Tueur (1972)
Directed by Denys de La Patellière

Film Review

Towards the end of his illustrious career, Jean Gabin lent his talents to this formulaic policier, the last occasion he would be cast in the role of a police inspector.  Within spitting distance of his seventieth birthday, Gabin is manifestly too old for the part of a senior police chief actively in pursuit of a homicidal madman but his sober presence adds a badly needed jolt of realism to a film that is too content to coast along on a sea of well-worn clichés.   Director Denys de La Patellière has none of the flair or aptitude for the genre of his contemporaries Henri Verneuil and Jacques Deray and so Le Tueur looks pretty insignificant when placed alongside the more impressive offerings from these masters of the classic French film policier.

What Le Tueur does have to make up for its run-of-the-mill scenario and insipid mise-en-scène is a respectable cast, with Italian actor Fabio Testi suitably cast as the deranged killer being chased across France by some pretty clueless policemen.  Testi somehow brings a touch of old-fashioned romanticism to his characterisation, which is fiercely at odds with his character's savagely bestial instincts, to kill or be killed.  Gérard Depardieu appears briefly in a few scenes at the start of his career, and brings the film to life whenever he does so, but the real star of the piece is Bernard Blier, superbly authoritative as a police chief whose incessant wranglings with Gabin over what constitutes appropriate police procedure provide an enjoyable sideshow.  Claude Renoir's cinematography gives the film a gloss that partly undermines its realism, although Hubert Giraud's eerie score (so perfectly evocative of the dark nature of Testi's mercurial killer) helps to make up for that.   Le Tueur is by no means a classic but it gave Gabin one last outing in the genre to which he was admirably well-suited in his later years, and is all the more enjoyable for that.

Film Synopsis

Superintendent Le Guen thought he had seen the last of Georges Gassot, a relentless serial killer, when he arrested him and had him placed behind bars.  But Gasso is a wilier bird than he had supposed and it isn't long after being moved to a psychiatric hospital that the psychopathic criminal escapes and goes on the run.  With the help of his brother François, Gasso manages to get as far as Marseille, with the intention of fleeing the country as soon as he can.  As he plans his escape to foreign climes, the killer comes into contact with an attractive young woman named Gerda and becomes instantly besotted with her.  The girl's unwelcome pimps are readily dealt with by Gasso.  It's so reassuring to see that he hasn't yet lost his penchant for cold-blooded murder.

Realising that escape from Marseille is going to be much harder than he had thought, Gasso makes a hasty return to Paris.  Once again, the redoubtable Le Guen is on the killer's tail, more determined than ever to put him back where he belongs - in the most secure prison that France can offer a maniac of his calibre.  The superintendent's somewhat brutal methods bring him into immediate conflict with his new boss, François Tellier, whose own ideas about modern policing merely arouse Le Guen's contempt.  He may be hovering on the threshold of retirement, but Le Guen knows how to do his job better than any cop, and being a mule-headed Breton he has a tenacity that makes it impossible for him to leave any job half-done.  He will get Gasso, if it's the last thing he does.

Assisted by his dependable and fashionably dressed second lieutenant, Campana, Le Guen soon manages to get the killer within his sights, but by this time Gasso is up to his old tricks, slaying anyone who gets in his path with casual impunity.  In what now feels less like a police manhunt and more like a personal battle of wills, Le Guen resorts to the most contemptible form of skulduggery, turning the killer's underworld associates against him in the hope of hastening his capture.  Gasso realises that his time is fast running out, but the one thing he is certain of is that he will not be taken alive.  When Le Guen moves in for the kill, he has one last trick up his sleeve...