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Typical French production of the fifties
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Revisiting the Lemmy Caution
myth- film by JL Godard, with Eddie Constantine (1965)
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aka JOY HOUSE, film Noir by
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As early as in 1932 Jean Renoir made La nuit du carrefour / The Night at the Crossroad, a Georges Simenon adaptation, notable for its fog and rain-drenched nocturnal imagery. In the 1930s France was plagued by economic instability and political scandals, it witnessed the hope and later the defeat of the Popular Front, the rise of fascism in Europe and the impending threat of war. A number of directors reflected that bleakness and disillusionment in their films. Jean Renoir directed La Chienne (1931) and La Bete humaine / The Human Beast (1938) - both were later remade as Hollywood "noirs" by Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street and Human Desire). Actor Jean Gabin was the perfect embodiment of the romantic fatalistic hero that dominated the French films of the period. In Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937), Gabin plays a tough gang leader in the Algerian casbah who becomes vulnerable through his love for a beautiful French tourist. Though nominally it was a gangster film, it had a lot in common with the films of "poetic realism" that the actor made with director Marcel Carné shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The inevitable, symbolic defeat which Gabin's characters suffered in the atmospheric, urban, gloom-laden crime melodramas Quai des brumes / Port of Shadows (1938) and Le Jour se lève / Daybreak (1939) matched the mood of the time. The films of "poetic realism" displayed a strong sense of composition and lighting, visual motives of night in the city, deep shadows and patterned lighting on faces, sleazy locations such as bars and clubs. Also in 1939, Pierre Chenal made Le Dernier tournant, adapted from James M. Cain's quintessential noir novel The Postman Always Rings Twice several years before Hollywood dared to film it. So France's post-war interest in film noir was rediscovering its own cultural tradition that had been interrupted by World War II and the occupation.
During World War II and the German occupation, the filmmakers tended to avoid actuality and atmospheric crime films provided them with the perfect opportunity. The period was dominated by the adaptations of Belgians Georges Simenon and Stanislas André Steeman , as well as a French "provincial," Pierre Véry. Henri-Georges Clouzot who debuted with the Steeman adaptation L'assassin habite au 21 / The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942) then directed his first noir masterpiece, Le Corbeau / The Raven (1943), a story of poison pen letters in small French town, inspired by the actual events that took place in Tulle in 1928. So relentlessly bleak and misanthropic was Clouzot's vision that he was accused by his fellow countrymen of producing anti-French propaganda for the Germans (the film was financed by a German company, Continental) and after the Liberation he was suspended from directing for a few years.
Still, after the war very few
filmmakers used the German occupation as a framework for their films. Literary
adaptations remained the main staple of the period, with Simenon and Steeman
among the most frequently adapted authors. Writer Léo Malet began
with 120 Rue de la Gare, a series of novels featuring France’s first "hard-boiled"
private eye character - the arrogant, slang-spouting Nestor Burma - who
was promptly brought to the screen by Jacques Daniel-Norman in 1945. The
classic of the period - Quai des Orfèvres / Jenny Lamour (1947)
was Henri-Georges Clouzot’s characteristically pessimistic essay on the
human condition. A number of French film noirs of the late 1940s (for example,
Julien Duvivier’s Panique, and Yves Allégret’s Une si
jolie petite plage / Riptide and Dédée d'Anvers /
Dédée) maintained a good artistic and technical level
and became known as "cinema of quality." Later that term would become an
insult in the hands of the young critics of the French New Wave.
As it was mentioned earlier,
in 1945 the Gallimard publishing house and Marcel Duhamel brought up a
new crime series, the "Série Noire". The series provided the filmmakers
with a new source of inspiration and a new type of hero: a private eye
(or an investigative reporter), physically fit, humorous, relaxed, charming,
a lover of whisky and beautiful women. Expatriate American actor/singer
Eddie Constantine made a career in the 1950s playing the quick-fisted FBI
agent Lemmy Caution in the adaptations of British author Peter Cheyney:
La Mome vert-de-gris / Poison Ivy (1952), Cet homme est dangereux
/ This Man is Dangerous (1953), Les femmes s'en balancent (1954),
etc. Those films were self-consciously tongue-in-cheek and increasingly
verged on parody.
In contrast to that lightheartedness,
there were the writings of Boileau and Narcejac with their psychologically-oriented
tales of coldly calculated murder and betrayal among the French middle
class (Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques / Diabolique (1954) being the most
famous film adaptation), and the dark dramas by André Cayatte denouncing
the deficiency of the French legal system: La Justice est faite / Justice
is Done (1950), Nous sommes tous les assassins / We Are All Murderers
(1952), Avant le deluge / Before the Deluge (1953) and Le
Dossier noir (1955).
Another popular trend in the
1950s was the adaptations of French novels set in the gangster milieu.
Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au Grisbi / Grisbi (1954), from the
novel by Albert Simonin, and Jules Dassin’s Du rififi chez les hommes
/ Rififi (1955), from the novel of Auguste Le Breton, presented aging
hoods planning one last heist in the hopes of retiring, confronted by a
new generation of crooks, more brutal and perverse, who didn’t adhere to
any code of thieves’ honor. The success of those two films prompted Simonin
and Le Breton to write more stories in the similar vein. It was the time
of tough guys, elaborate heists and shifting loyalties, the time of Bob
le flambeur / Bob the Gambler (1955), Razzia sur la chnouf (1955),
Gas-oil (1956) and Le rouge est mis (1957), to name just
a few. Director Jacques Becker, who started the trend, made a fitting conclusion
to his career with Le trou / The Hole (1960), adapted shortly before
his death from the novel by Jose Giovanni.
In the 1960s, movies in the Série Noire style continued to be made -- Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques / The Big Risk (1960), Rene Clement's Plein soleil / Purple Noon (1960) and Les Felins / Joy House (1964), Henri Verneuil's Melodie en sous-sol / Any Number Can Win (1963) and Le Clan des siciliens / The Sicilian Clan (1969) -- but they increasingly gave way to crime comedies and spoofs. Writer Albert Simonin, who initiated the gangster cycle a decade earlier, openly mocked himself and the genre in Le cave se rebiffe / The Counterfeiters of Paris (1961) and Les tontons flingueurs (1964).
Another important change that occurred was the advent of the New Wave in the late 1950s. The young critics-turned-filmmakers were outspoken in their rejection of "dad’s cinema" and "cinema of quality" as represented by the older generation of French directors. At the same time, the New Wave filmmakers drew their inspiration from the work of such American directors as Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray. Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle / Breathless (1960), that uncompromising manifesto of the New Wave, was a self-styled homage to American crime films. Godard used "Serie Noire" novels as source material for his films Bande à part / The Band of Outsiders (1964) and Pierrot le fou (1965) and he revived the Lemmy Caution character in his futuristic film noir Alphaville (1965). François Truffaut’s second film Tirez sur le pianiste / Shoot the Piano Player (1960) blended the fatalism of American film noir with humor, pathos and romance. Truffaut's subsequent ventures into the noir territory included two adaptations from Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish): La mariée était en noir / The Bride Wore Black (1967) and La sirene du Mississippi / The Mississippi Mermaid (1969). Claude Chabrol revealed his predilection for film noir as early as in A double tour / Web of Passion (1959) and later in the quartet of his most acclaimed films: La femme infidèle / The Unfaithful Wife (1968), Le Boucher / The Butcher (1969), Que la bete meure / This Man Must Die (1970) and Juste avant la nuit / Before the Nightfall (1971).
Though the New Wave certainly made its contribution to the crime genre, the true hero of the period was director Jean-Pierre Melville. A big admirer of American gangster films, he managed to create the distinctly French variation on the genre in the gangster noirs Le Doulos / The Finger Man (1962) and Le deuxième souffle / The Second Breath (1966). Later Melville distilled his style to near abstraction in Le Samourai (1967) and Le cercle rouge / The Red Circle (1970), both starring Alain Delon.
After the turmoil of 1968, the
genre became more politicized. The novels and films of the period adopted
an increasingly militant attitude denouncing social injustice, racism,
police brutality, and political corruption, and became known as "neo-polars."
Writers like Jean-Patrick Manchette, Francis Ryck, Jean Vautrin, Raf Vallet,
film directors Yves Boisset, Costa-Gavras, Pierre Granier-Deferre, Philippe
Labro and the others liberally blended the polar with the psychological
drama, spy intrigue, social and political commentary. Very often in those
films, the honest cop failed (Pierre Granier-Deferre's Adieu poulet
/ The French Detective (1975), Yves Boisset's Le Juge Fayard dit
le Sheriff (1977)). The heroes who succeeded were often positioned
outside the police force such as Jean-Paul Belmondo’s modern bounty hunter
in L’alpagueur / The Hunter Will Get You (1976) or Alain Delon’s
lone vigilante in Mort d’un pourri / To Kill a Rat (1977). The politicizing
of the polar did not prevent the filmmakers from producing more commercial
fare, modeled on American thrillers, which served merely as the star vehicles
for Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura.
Director Alain Corneau kept
the noir tradition alive with the trio of films starring Yves Montand -
Police Python 357 (1975), La Menace (1977) and Le Choix
des armes / Choice of Arms (1981) - and the aptly titled Serie noire
(1979) starring Patrick Dewaere.
