Non coupable (1947)
Directed by Henri Decoin

Film Review

With Non coupable, Henri Decoin's long journey into night reaches its most abject port of call - not just dipping its toes into the more fetid cesspools of human depravity as some of the director's previous films had done, but positively wallowing in them, just as Decoin's contemporary Julien Duvivier was wont to do around this time.  It was Duvivier's Panique (1947) starring Michel Simon that most vividly captured the mood of cynicism and pessimism that prevailed in France immediately after WWII.  Decoin's Non coupable, released eight months later that same year, was even grimmer, with Simon once again fitted up to play the man driven to his doom by the darkest and deadliest facets of human nature.  In Panique, Simon was merely a victim of circumstances; in Decoin's film he is unequivocally the villain; but in both cases, we see him as someone who is more to be pitied than loathed, easy prey for those unseen forces of the night that delight in the devastation they can wreak on a man's soul.

The title is meant in a deeply ironic vein, for the film is not about a man protesting his innocence, but rather one who craves to be found guilty. The main protagonist, so perfectly suited for Michel Simon in his middle years, is a harmless buffoon who discovers he has a knack of committing the perfect murder.  At first, he believes it is his superior intellect that allows him to fool the police, but he soon realises that it is simply because he is a likeable idiot that he is above suspicion.  It's a neat inversion of the classic film noir scenario, in which an innocent man becomes implicated in crimes he had no hand in and ends up playing the fall guy for the sadistic amusement of the Fates.  In Decoin's film, Simon commits a succession of pre-meditated murders with the hope that, if he is found out, people will look upon him with renewed respect.  Unfortunately, Simon is so good at his art, or such an improbable killer, that his genius for murder will never be appreciated, and once again the Fates have the last laugh.  Simon's ultimate failure, as horrific as it is tragic, provides the best denouement of any film Decoin directed and cannot fail to send a shiver down the spine, the darkest ending to the darkest French film of the decade.  Or maybe Decoin intended it to be funny?

The subject of non-expiated guilt is an interesting and daring one for a French film released so soon after the Second World War.  The painful experience of the Occupation was still widely felt, and would be for many years yet, but the greater sin - France's willing complicity in the Nazi Holocaust - was a far more profound cause of shame and this would weigh heavily on the nation for several more decades before it finally came to be accepted in the 1970s.  We shall never know to what extent the film's writer Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon was moved by an awareness of France's war crimes when he was writing the script, but, by accident or design, Non coupable can hardly help looking like some form of dark allegory, one that resonates with the anguish of a soul burdened by crimes for which atonement is impossible.  The bleakest and most savagely intense of Henri Decoin's films ends with its protagonist willing to send himself to Hell for no better reason than vanity.  The crime of Maréchal Pétain was far greater - he was prepared to send his entire country to Hell for exactly the same reason.

Film Synopsis

Michel Ancelin was once a respected surgeon but now, an embittered alcoholic, he lives out his declining years as a family doctor in a dull provincial town in the company of his mistress, Madeleine.  One evening, whilst driving home in a state of intoxication, Ancelin accidentally kills a motor cyclist.  To Madeleine's horror, Ancelin decides not to report the matter to the police but instead he makes it appear that the cyclist killed himself by crashing into a wall.  The ruse works and Ancelin is surprised by how easy it is to get away with killing someone.  He is the last person anyone in the town would mistake for a murderer...  Convinced he has a gift for committing the perfect murder, Ancelin stabs a garage owner to death on learning that he has been carrying on a secret affair with Madeleine.  Rather than suspect the seemingly inoffensive doctor, the police look elsewhere and soon conclude they are dealing with a criminal mastermind.  A subsequent murder, committed for reasons of professional jealousy, persuades Madeleine that she must denounce Ancelin to the police, but the good doctor has foreseen even this eventuality.  It is time for Madeleine to die...