Quai des Orfèvres (1947)
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Film Review

It was with the support of the actor Louis Jouvet that Henri-Georges Clouzot was able to resume his filmmaking career after a four year break and go on to make some of his greatest films, of which Quai des Orfèvres is undoubtedly one. The reaction to Clouzot's previous film, Le Corbeau (1943), had been almost unanimously negative and resulted in the director being banned from working in the French film industry after the Liberation for alleged Nazi collaboration.  Clouzot redeemed himself in a spectacular fashion with his next film, an atmospheric investigative crime drama that not only won him the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 but also laid the foundations for the modern film policier, one of French cinema's most popular genres.  The film also provided Jouvet with his last great role, that of a world-weary limpet-like police inspector who lies somewhere between Jules Maigret and Lieutenant Columbo.

Quai des Orfèvres is very loosely based on the novel Légitime défense by the well-known crime writer Stanislas-André Steeman.  This was Clouzot's third Steeman adaptation - he had made his directing debut with L'Assassin habite au 21 (1942) and previously worked on the screenplay for Georges Lacombe's Le Dernier des six (1941), both effective reworkings of Steeman novels. Another thing these two films had in common was that they featured a rising star of French cinema, Suzy Delair, a vivacious stage and cabaret performer who enjoyed great success as a singer, dancer and actress.  Quai des Orfèvres gave Delair (at the time Clouzot's long-standing partner - they separated after this film) her most memorable screen role and the one that fits her most perfectly, that of the go-getting music hall singer who is prepared to do anything to advance her career.  One of the interesting aspects of the film is the similarity between the two characters played by Delair and her co-star Jouvet.  Both are cynically motivated and resort to skulduggery to achieve their ends, but both are ultimately revealed to have a heart of gold (Delair is willing to give up her own life to save her husband, Jouvet risks ostracisation by adopting a black boy).  Similar apparent character inconsistencies abound in this film, contrasting with the more one dimensional characterization of Clouzot's subsequent films, which generally offer a much less ambiguous, far gloomier assessment of human nature.  The film is also notable for featuring a sympathetic lesbian, beautifully played by the stunning Simone Renant, arguably the most likeable character in Clouzot's entire oeuvre.  Other distinguished performances are supplied by Bernard Blier, superb as the jealous husband who gets caught up in the wheels of justice, and Charles Dullin, deliciously evil as a hunchbacked skirt-chaser, sadly his last film appearance.  Avid French film fans should have no trouble spotting another familiar face, that of Robert Dalban very early in his career.

It was Clouzot's subsequent film Les Diaboliques (1955) which prompted reviewers to pin on him the epithet of France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock.  However, Quai des Orfèvres is a far more recognisably Hitchcockian piece, in both its subject and its style, although it is hard to say to what extent Clouzot was actually influenced by the Master of Suspense.  The central plot device of a man wrongly accused of a crime is one that frequently recurs in Hitchcock's films, most notably in Saboteur (1942) and The Wrong Man (1956), and the ambiguous characterisation, the lack of a clearly defined boundary between good and evil, also lends a distinctly Hitchcockian touch.  However, what most gives the film its Hitchcockian resonance is the way in which it is faultlessly photographed and edited, to heighten the drama, wrong-foot the spectator and ratchet up the suspense to a nerve-wracking climax.

Armand Thirard's atmospheric cinematography brings a film noir murkiness, a stench of moral decay, that feels appropriate for the seedy Parisian settings and adds to the oppressive mood, which Clouzot occasionally relives with some unexpected comic flourishes (a milk pan boiling over serves as a laughably crude metaphor for the unleashed male libido).  Camera motion is used imaginatively, not gratuitously, to inject a sense of growing menace, a sense that Maurice (Blier) is bring manoeuvred to his destruction by the cruel hand of fate, and that nothing will save him.  The striking camera zoom which shows Maurice being lured to his seductive wife (irresistible in her frilly French underwear) is repeated a short while later when he discovers the body of the murder victim, making the connection between desire and destruction blisteringly evident and thereby persuading us that he is a doomed man.

Yet, despite the abundance of Hitchcockian motifs, Quai des Orfèvres is evidently far more than a shallow imitation of Hitchcock.  Clearly it has far more substance to it than the plethora of police procedural dramas it inspired in following decades.  Rather, it is a compelling and deeply disturbing study in the ease with which human beings allow themselves to be deceived by appearances.  It warns us that we should never take things at face value, never rush to judgement, never be too eager to press the button that will fry the condemned man.  If there is a single unifying theme to Clouzot's oeuvre, it is that things are never quite what they seem.  The truth is always far darker, far more fantastic and convoluted than we can ever imagine.  Seeing isn't necessarily believing.

Film Synopsis

Against the wishes of her husband Maurice, music hall singer Jenny Lamour is prepared to do anything to advance her career.  It has long been her ambition to become a film star, so when film producer Georges Brignon leads her to think he can get her into the movies she readily consents to a secret meeting with him.  She dismisses her friend Dora's warnings that she about to get herself mixed up with a treacherous Lothario.  The news that his wife is having an assignation with a man of dubious character so incenses Maurice that he immediately heads over to Brignon's home, with murder in his heart.  He has arranged a seemingly cast-iron alibi for himself, so if he does kill the film producer he knows he will be in the clear.

It seems that someone else also had a grudge against Brignon, because when Maurice gets to him the loathsome producer is already dead.  What he doesn't yet know is that, earlier that evening, Jenny struck Brignon on the head with a wine bottle when he became too familiar with her.  Taking charge of the police investigation, Inspector Antoine appears to have a ready-made suspect in Maurice, whose alibi turns out not to be as watertight as he had thought.  Jenny and her friend Dora do their best to exculpate Maurice, but it seems that nothing they say will prevent an innocent man from being sent to the scaffold.  In the end, Jenny has no choice but to make a confession.  But it turns how she could not have been the murderer.  Brignon was killed not by a bottle but by a bullet...