Maigret tend un piège (1958)
Directed by Jean Delannoy

Film Review

In the 1950s, American film noir cast a long shadow over French cinema and was a crucial factor in the establishment of what would become one of France's most successful film genres for the next few decades, the film policier.   Jacques Becker had started the ball rolling in 1954 with his seminal crime drama Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), closely followed by Jules Dassin's Du rififi chez les hommes (1955).  The influence of American film noir is very noticeable in Jean Delannoy's Maigret tend un piège, a slick and eerily atmospheric adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon.   A haunting recurring theme by Paul Misraki evokes the sleaziness and menace of just about every film noir you can recall, and hangs in the air like a poisonous mist, luring us into a dark and dangerous twilight world of criminal malice and chicanery.  The spectre of film noir lingers just as palpably in much of French cinema of this era.

Comfortably ensconced in the role of the world's most famous fictional detective bar two (after Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot) is a formidable Jean Gabin, who positively relishes the part of Maigret and does it justice with one of his finest post-WWII performances.  This was the first (and by far the best) of Gabin's three outings as Maigret.  His subsequent Maigret films - Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre (1959) and Maigret voit rouge (1963) - are comparatively pedestrian, lacking both the artistic flair and dramatic intensity of Maigret tend un piège.  It should be noted that Gabin was not the first French actor to play Maigret.  Abel Tarride had first portrayed the pipe-smoking 'tec in Le Chien jaune (1932), followed by Pierre Renoir (La Nuit du carrefour, 1932), Harry Baur La Tête d'un homme, 1933) and Albert Préjean (Picpus, 1943).  In the 1990s, Bruno Cremer would claim the part as his own in a long-running and highly acclaimed series for French television.

Assisting Gabin in his tortuous enquiries is a mouthwatering ensemble of acting talent that includes rising star Annie Girardot (shortly before she had her international breakthrough in Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers) and established performer Jean Desailly (best known for his role of the unfaithful husband in Truffaut's La Peau douce).  Lino Ventura puts in a fleeting appearance (having had a noticeable presence in several of Gabin's previous films, including Grisbi) and French film aficionados will doubtless have fun identifying the cavalcade of character actors that includes Jean Tissier, Jean Debucourt, Guy Decomble and Paulette Dubost.  Another face to watch out for is Lucienne Bogaert, who is superb as the main suspect's deliciously warped mother.  With such a distinguished cast, it is hardly surprising that the film was a substantial box office hit in France, attracting an audience of over three million.

Jean Delannoy directs the film with his customary panache and keen visual flair.  The nocturnal exterior sequences are a pretty blatant homage to American film noir, the shadowy setting and use of off-kilter camera angles adding to the oppressive sense of menace whilst hinting at the mental derangement that Maigret must grapple with if he is to solve the mystery.  Although much-maligned by the future directors of the French New Wave, Delannoy was one of most accomplished and versatile French filmmakers of the 1940s and 50s.  His films were stylish, imaginatively crafted, almost technically flawless and highly popular with mainstream audiences.  Previously, he had directed another superlative noir drama, Macao, l'enfer du jeu (1942), and had collaborated with Jean Cocteau on the classic L'Éternel retour (1943).  Truffaut et al. may not have rated Delannoy highly as an auteur, but he brings a very distinctive touch to most of his films, and he was not afraid to experiment (as he does here, with some inspired use of the subjective camera) and tackle controversial subjects (Chiens perdus sans collier, Les Amitiés particulières).  Maigret tend un piège is far from being Delannoy's greatest film, but it is one of his most entertaining, and easily one of French cinema's most respectable Simenon adaptations.

Film Synopsis

A mysterious serial killer is at work in the Marais district of Paris.  So far he has claimed the lives of four victims, all young women, all savagely stabbed to death.  Police superintendent Maigret fears the criminal will strike again but he hasn't the slightest clue to his identity.  Desperate to make a breakthrough, he conceives a risky plan that may lure the killer into the open.  A false arrest is made just before the latest crime is reconstructed, and sure enough the killer attacks another woman.  Fortunately, the later has been forewarned and manages to scare off her attacker.  During the police reconstruction, Inspector Lagrume notices a young woman, Yvonne Maurin, behaving in a suspicious manner.  When Maigret probes her on her strange behaviour the woman confesses that she has been conducting an illicit affair with another man and was anxious to keep this from her husband, a decorator named Marcel Maurin.  It transpires that the latter grew up in a butcher's shop near to where the latest killing took place, and from which the murder weapon was apparently stolen...