Méfiez-vous fillettes (1957)
Directed by Yves Allégret

Film Review

It's tragic that a film director who, at the start of the 1950s, was hailed as one of French cinema's most promising auteurs, should end up, before the end of the decade, helming characterless potboilers.  Can the genius who crafted such an extraordinary cinematic gem as Une si jolie petite plage (1949) really be the same man who turned out the derivative thriller Méfiez-vous fillettes eight years later?   Failing inspiration and personal tragedy have affected many a great artist, but somehow Yves Allégret's sudden decline from hero to zero has a special poignancy.

Adapted from James Hadley Chase's crime novel Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief, Méfiez-vous fillettes is formulaic trash that is virtually indistinguishable from the mass of low-grade, cliché-drenched thrillers that descended on French cinema in the 1950s, a deluge caused by the immense popularity of American film noir in France immediately after WWII.  What posessed Allégret to prostitute his talents in the service of such insipid populist fare as this, you ask yourself.  Was it self-indulgence or sheer laziness that led him to make a film that stuck slavishly to the well-worn conventions of the mock-American B-movie, ticking off the clichés as it goes?

Everything about this film - the plot, the characters, the setting, the design, even the music - looks as if it is borrowed, and with the subtlety of a smash-and-grab raid in broad daylight.  If there is any originality, it is cleverly hidden from view.  Robert Hossein, who had such presence in Georges Lampin's Crime et châtiment (1956), is as wooden and expressionless as a dressmaker's dummy in the stereotypical lead role, although he is better served by the lacklustre script than most of his co-stars.  Méfiez-vous fillettes isn't Allégret's worst film (it would be a few years yet before he reached the absolute nadir of his art) but it is certainly one of his dullest.

Film Synopsis

Raven's first act after being released from prison is to track down and kill the gangster boss who put him beyond bars - Mendetta.  The sole witness to the execution is a young woman named Dany, a lodger in the building where the crime took place.  Realising that Dany's testimony might be used to his advantage, Mendetta's right-hand man, Palmer, has her abducted and placed under lock and key.  Now that Medetta is safely out of the way, Raven can take his place as the king of the Parisian underworld, with the help of his ever-loyal associate Petit Jo.

The only resistance that Raven encounters is from an old-timer named Spade, who has no intention of kowtowing to Raven, Palmer or any other big-headed big shot.  Unaware that her husband Léo is desperately searching for her, Dany finally loses hope and attempts suicide.  She is saved in the nick of time by Raven, who, struck by her beauty, places her under his protection.  The unforgiving Palmer refuses to be beaten and it is with a steely determination that he draws his enemy into a bloody final confrontation that will prove decisive for the two hoodlums...