Monsieur La Souris (1942)
Directed by Georges Lacombe

Film Review

Within a few months of starring in one film adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel, namely Henri Decoin's Les Inconnus dans la maison (1942), Raimu was back on French cinema screens in another, albeit one of a very different hue, namely Monsieur La Souris.  In contrast to the sombre, intensely dramatic performance Raimu gave in Decoin's film (one that is easily among his best), here he is comfortably ensconced as the amiable clown, a kind of Gallic Worzel Gummidge playing at Hercule Poirot in a murder mystery that has something of a crisis of identity.  Director Georges Lacombe and screenwriter Marcel Achard look as if they were unsure whether the film should be a straight crime drama or a comedy thriller (along the lines of Lacombe's earlier Le Dernier des six), so they deliver something in between, a stuttering whodunit that is mostly dead serious apart from the scenes in which Raimu appears and has a go at playing the amateur sleuth.

In the end, it is Raimu's likeable tramp that saves what is essentially a humdrum crime drama that offers few surprises other than a neat twist ending.  Heavily made up (so that he really does look like a walking scarecrow) and eschewing his usual theatrical excesses (bawling, face-pulling and gesticulating at the slightest provocation), Raimu is virtually unrecognisable and offers one of his more convincing and palatable tragicomic portrayals.  Most of the other distinguished performers - Aimé Clariond, Paul Amiot and Micheline Francey - are pretty well wasted, but Raimu is absolutely in his element and gives great value, as does Charles Granval, another charismatic veteran of stage and screen (best remembered for playing Monsieur Lestingois in Jean Renoir's Boudu sauvé des eaux), who died not long after the film was released.  Monsieur La Souris is far from being cinema's best Simenon adaptation but it is one of Georges Lacombe's more enjoyable films, its main virtue being that it gave Raimu a rare opportunity to inhabit a comedic character role (albeit one that creepily resembles a Pinter-esque reinterpretation of Chaplin's tramp) in what is for the most part a bog standard 1940s policier.

Film Synopsis

His fortune lost through an amorous adventure that turned sour, Antonin Ramatuel is reduced to living like a tramp, subsisting on the few francs he can take off the good folk of Paris.  Nicknamed Monsieur La Souris, he gratefully accepts tips offered him when he opens car doors for the wealthy patrons of an exclusive nightclub.  One night, he receives not a tip but the shock of his life when he opens the door of a limousine and finds that its owner is stone dead.  When Antonin returns to the spot less than a minute later with the cabaret's doorman, the car has driven off.  On the road nearby is a wallet which Antonin hastily pockets.  The wallet contains a small fortune in high denomination banknotes, so, taking the advice of a fellow tramp, Antonin hides the wallet in a bar and hands over the money to the police in a plain envelope, confident that he will be able to claim the money as his own in a year's time.  The dead man that Antonin saw in the car is discovered a short while later and identified as the wealthy financier Edgard Negretti.  As Inspecteur Lognon begins his investigation into Negretti's murder he suspects that Antonin may in some way be implicated in the crime.  Realising that he has allowed himself to become mixed up in a criminal intrigue that may not end well for him, Antonin begins his own investigation, and discovers the killer's identity way ahead of the police...