Hungry for those wet Parisian streets, the city lights, and cadavres en lambeaux in the pale moonlight? Enter three highly atmospheric, star-studded Crime Noirs, one of which is a stealth classic of Gallic Pulp. Stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, and Annie Girardot bring the tales of à sang froid malice and mayhem to life. The films featured are Gilles Grangier’s Speaking of Murder (Le rouge est mis) and Édouard Molinaro’s Back to the Wall (Le dos au mur) and Witness in the City (Un Témoin dans la ville). Beware of French husbands when cucklolded — they show no pity.  Bonne chance, victimes!

French Noir Collection
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1957-59 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 265 minutes / Street Date November 29, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, Annie Girardot, Paul Frankeur, Gérard Buhr, Jean Lefebvre, Franco Fabrizi, Micheline Luccioni.
Directed by Gilles Grangier, Édouard Molinaro (2)

Mention classic French crime pix — the ones inflected by hardboiled crime fiction — and some of the same great titles will come to mind: Jules Dassin’s Du Rififi chez les hommes, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur, Claude Sautet’s Classe tous risques, and Jacques Becker’s Touche pa au grisbi and Le trou. Melville carried the ball into the 1960s with Le doulos and Le deuxième souffle, and then further into a new, slick post-classic style: Le samouraï, Le cercle rouge.

Reference books like the Hardy Encyclopedia of the Gangster Film list dozens of additional titles that get much less attention. Some have arrived on Blu-ray through sparkling Studiocanal restorations. Kino Lorber’s new French Noir Collection sports three films from the Gaumont company, all from the late 1950s. One is very good, the second even better and the third deserves to be ranked with the other masterpieces of the form. They are indeed part of the hardboiled crime tradition. One deals with professional thieves and the other two are cold-blooded murder tales centered on adultery. Those two are by a director in full command of the style, Édouard Molinaro.

These French movies have an advantage over Hollywood noir, in that their content isn’t subject to the strictures of our Production Code: amoral characters can retain shades of gray. The collection features movie stars we associate with classic French noir, but the real thrill will be for fans that can’t get enough of the atmospheric milieu: Paris streets at night, the clubs, hotels, subways, taxis and diners. Does everybody in these movies drive an oversized American car?

Back at Cannon films, editor Alex Renskoff was always reading unfamiliar vintage paperbacks, by hardboiled authors like David Goodis. Alex soon had me reading crime novels by Goodis and others — Nightfall etc., and supposed ‘lesser’ titles by James M. Cain, like Love’s Lovely Counterfeit. That’s how we feel watching the less-famous shows in the French Noir Collection . . . they put one back in ‘the zone.’

Speaking of Murder
original title   Le rouge est mis
1957 / 1:37 Academy / 85 min.
Starring: Jean Gabin, Paul Frankeur, Marcel Bozzuffi, Lino Ventura, Annie Girardot, Albert Dinan, Antonin Berval, Thomy Bourdelle, Serge Lecointe, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Claude Nicot, Jacques Marin.
Cinematography: Louis Page
Production Designer: Robert Clavel
Film Editors: Christian Gaudin, Jacqueline Sadoul
Original Music: Denis Kieffer
Written by Michel Audiard, Gilles Grangier, Auguste Le Breton from a novel by Auguste Le Breton
Produced by Jacques Bar, Alain Poiré
Directed by Gilles Grangier

The first entry is more or less a standard caper picture, strong on detail and maybe a little formulaic in the drama department. By the mid- 1950s star Jean Gabin was calling the shots in his career, taking worthwhile parts from name directors, and semi-producing other movies over which he exercised more control. He worked a lot with the popular director Gilles Grangier, sometimes just ‘coasting’ in a familiar role. But he also turned in excellent, interesting work, as in Grangier’s Le désordre et la nuit.

In Le rouge est mis Gabin is Louis Bertain, a garage owner in a town outside of Paris, who pulls off occasional robberies with a select group of confederates, including the nervous Fredo (Paul Frankeur of Touchez pa au grisbi) and the angry loose cannon Pepito (central French noir actor Lino Ventura). Louis lives with his aged mother. The two of them try to advise his younger brother Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi of The French Connection ). Fresh from a jail term, Pierre has foolishly returned to his bad-faith lover, Hélène (Annie Girardot of Rocco and his Brothers).

Convinced that he’s helping his brother, Louis picks up the greedy Hélène, and then threatens her to leave Pierre alone. A second heist is organized out of a building Louis has rented, where their getaway car and a machine gun are stashed. The cops brace Pierre, who has heard of Louis’ plans but refuses to talk. In the aftermath of the robbery, Louis is shocked when the police pick him up almost immediately. He escapes, and must rush to save his brother — the hot-headed Pepito is convinced that Pierre has squealed, and wants bloody revenge.

From the relationship of the brothers to the falling-out of the thieves, Le rouge est mis plays in a familiar, generic vein. Jean Gabin gets to be the wise old fox, who knows how to clam up when grilled by the cops. He has no love interest but instead gets rough with Annie Girardot’s conniving gold digger. We know where the show is going when Gabin’s Louis tells Pepito that he’s quitting ‘after one last haul’ . . . after which the finale boils down to a brutal shoot-out in a hotel stairway. It’s basically the kind of sentimental gangster story (with raw edges) that our Production Code forbade: charismatic thieves that we admire even when the fade-out leaves them dead in the gutter.

The big literary name behind Le rouge est mis is Auguste Le Breton, a writer associated with numerous French ‘noirs’ from Rififi forward. On some films Le Breton contributed dialogue, using his first-hand knowledge of the specialized street argot of criminals. Part of the unsavory edge of these Gallic crime tales seems to derive from unsavory memories of the Occupation experience: in Touche pas au grisbi we discover that our ‘honorable’ crooks may have been active collaborators with the French Gestapo. Le Breton is said to have joined the resistance partly because the Nazis put an end to illicit gambling in the Occupied Zone.

Jean Gabin is his solid self, but we have to admit that he’s more compelling in Le désordre et la nuit, as an older cop who finds romance with a woman twenty years younger, Nadja Tiller. Gabin’s ‘discovery’ Lino Ventura plays an atypical character, a nut case who when cornered goes crazy with his machine gun. The young Marcel Bozzuffi and Annie Girardot make solid impressions; both would enjoy long careers. In a bit part, favorite Jacques Marin is a dopey cop who inadvertently allows Louis Bertain to escape.

Eleven years later in The Sicilian Clan, Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura would have more scenes together in a similar auto garage setting.

In the 1950s the French star Jean Gabin was a marginal name here in the U.S., known only to dedicated foreign film fans. These French crime pix were neither arthouse shoo-ins nor Best Foreign Picture contenders. The exceptional hit Rififi was given a respectable independent release, probably dubbed in English. According to the IMDB, Le rouge est mis waited two years to be shown in New York.

Back to the Wall
original title   Le dos au mur
1958 / 1:37 Academy / 93 min.
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Gérard Oury, Philippe Nicaud, Claire Maurier, Gérard Buhr, Jean Lefebvre, Colette Renard, George Cusin, Robert Bazil, Jean Degrave, Richard Francoeur.
Cinematography: Robert Lefebre
Production Designer: Georges Lévy
Assistant Director: Claude Sautet
Film Editors: Monique Isnardon, Robert Isnardon
Original Music: Richard Cornu
Adapted by Frédéric Dard, François Chavane, Jean Redon from a novel by Frédéric Dard dialogues by Dard, Jean-Louis Roncoroni
Produced by François Chavane, Alain Poiré
Directed by Édouard Molinaro

The second film in the box is the big winner. Director Édouard Molinaro’s later career was marked by the massive hit La cage aux folles, but his first films were rooted in crime and mystery tales. Le dos au mur is his first feature. It’s an absorbing noir tragedy, and an instant favorite.

Source author Frédéric Dard was another incredibly prolific French wordsmith in the genres of crime and adventure; he wrote 175 books about a spy called Antoine San-Antonio. His subject here is cold-blooded domestic noir. Director Molinaro is aided by colleages that would soon work for Georges Franju on Eyes without A Face: writer Jean Redon and writer, assistant director, and future director Claude Sautet.

Le dos au mur makes excellent use of a flashback opening: businessman Jacques Decrey (excellent if unfamiliar actor Gérard Oury) disposes of a body by entombing it in a concrete wall being constructed at his factory. We then drop back three months, when Decrey is appalled to discover that his attractive wife Gloria (Jeanne Moreau) is carrying on a hot affair with a flighty young actor, Yves Normand (Philippe Nicaud). Jacques loves his wife and wants her back desperately. He know he’ll lose her if he makes a scene or does something violent. He instead uses underhanded means to undermine her interest in Yves.

Jacques pretends to be a third-party criminal blackmailing his wife and her lover. He ‘indulgently’ allows Gloria to pawn jewelry he’s given her, so she can obtain the blackmail money that she then unknowingly pays back to him. The setup reminds us a bit of Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame de . . . Gloria turns to her friend Ghislaine, the owner of a bar (Claire Maurier). Ghislaine uses personal connections to try to learn the identity of the unknown blackmailer.

Jacques’ cold-blooded deception is much worse than Gloria & Yves’ simple adultery. He hires an eccentric, philosophical private eye (Jean Lefebvre) to make Gloria believe that Yves is blackmailing her. The key scene comes in Ghislaine’s bar, when Jacques ever-so-delicately appeals to Ghislaine to aid him as well, ‘For Gloria’s own good.’  As it turns out, Ghislaine is emotionally involved as well: Yves was once her lover, too.

The horror arrives when Jacques’ god-gaming machinations succeed all too well. He only wants Gloria to change her mind about Yves, and come home. The unexpected result leads to a third act with several devastating reversals. Jacques doesn’t believe in being honest with people and prefers to concoct a scenario in which he holds all the cards. It’s a case of ‘best laid underhanded plans . . .’

Of the three pictures in this collection, the beautifully photographed and directed Le dos au mur is the one that packs genuine surprises — the story twists took us completely unawares. Did Gloria stray to escape Jacques’ everyday micro-manipulations?  Gérard Oury is not handsome but he has an intelligent, expressive face — he retains our sympathy even when we suspect that his deceitful scheme will not help him keep his wife. Are we supposed to like him because he doesn’t do the usual thing, and plot a typical ‘perfect’ murder?

Jeanne Moreau’s Gloria surprises us — she’s a casual adultress with personal integrity. Ms. Moreau filmed this show between her two breakthrough hits with Louis Malle, the superb suspense thriller Elevator to the Gallows and the controversial Les Amants with its ‘hot’ love affair.

Le dos au mur entertains in the same way Double Indemnity knocked us out, when first seen: we don’t know what’s going to happen next, and we find ourselves deeply invested in the outcome.

The IMDB says that critic and author Herman G. Weinberg created the English subs for Le dos au mur. Are they what is on the film now?  In the key scene with Jacques and Ghislaine at the bar, where he gains her help for his deception, the titles are very hard to follow … we had to play them back and freeze-frame to carefully read them. Perhaps Jacques’ delicate, roundabout proposal to Ghislaine couldn’t be simplified without compromising the sense of the scene . . . but in no way could we follow the subtitles the first time through.

Le dos au mur reportedly did get a New York art house release in 1959, a year after its Paris premiere.

Witness in the City
original title   Un Témoin dans la ville
1959 / 1:66 widescreen / 86 min.
Starring: Lino Ventura, Sandra Milo, Franco Fabrizzi, Jacques Berthier, Daniel Ceccaldi, Robert Dalban, Jacques Jouanneau, Micheline Luccioni, Ginette Pigeon, Janine Darcey, Françoise Brion, Billy Kearns.
Cinematography: Henri Decaé
Production Designer: Georges Lévy
Film Editors: Monique Isnardon, Robert Isnardon
Original Music: Barney Wilen
Written by Édouard Molinaro, Gérard Oury, Alain Poiré from the novel by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac dialogue by André Tabet, Georges Tabet
Produced by Henry Deutschmeister, Moris Ergas, Alain Poiré
Directed by Édouard Molinaro

The final film is 1959’s Un Témoin dans la ville, also directed by Édouard Molinaro. It may be the most elaborate production of the three, what with almost every scene shot in night-lit Parisian boulevards. The other two pictures provide snapshots of the French capital, but this show makes us feel like we’re cruising its narrow streets in the dead of night. Ace cameraman Henri Decaé lit the film, which must have been a massive undertaking, even with the faster ASA of new B&W film stocks.

This story is even more cruelly bloodthirsty than the first two. It’s from a Boileau-Narcejac novel, the writers of the novels from which were made the classics Les diaboliques, Eyes without a Face and Vertigo. It’s another story about a cuckolded husband who overreacts to his wife’s infidelity. We’ll give little away but it’s no surprise that he kills her — it happens just a few seconds into the story.

The story feels a bit like an inverted Taxi Driver: instead of an obsessed taxi driver in a violent relationship with a corrupt city, an obsessed individual ends up in a violent confrontation with the ‘taxi community’ of Paris.

The opening is traumatic: a woman (Françoise Brion) is shoved from a fast-moving train by her lover, Pierre Verdier (Jacques Berthier). She was the wife of Ancelin (star Lino Ventura), a manager at a trucking firm. When Verdier is released due to lack of evidence, Ancelin takes matters into his own hands, with a truly diabolical revenge murder. The perfect crime is jeopardized when he’s is seen at Verdier’s doorstep by Lambert, a taxi driver (Franco Fabrizi of Antonioni’s Le amiche).

Ancelin encounters increasing difficulty with his effort to neutralize his ‘witness problem.’ He tracks Lambert for a full day and a night, convinced that the cops will do the same thing. We now see an impressively detailed view of the Parisian ‘taxi’ lifestyle, from the garage to the dispatch office, to a bar frequented by the drivers in their off-hours. Driver-witness Lambert is in love with the delightful, independent Lilliane (Sandra Milo of Otto e mezzo), and their romance chooses this day to bloom. When Ancelin finally catches up with Lambert, the city’s taxi drivers unite to track him down — it’s a tight club of colleagues, a true guild. Everything about this fun crew of taxi workers is positive. We gravitate to them, and no longer want Ancelin to get away with anything.

The jeopardy and violence mounts as Lino Ventura’s Ancelin’s ‘easy fix’ turns into a horrible mess, with more killings accidental and intentional. Impeccably directed and beautifully photographed, Un Témoin dans la ville benefits from very sharp editing. The story is propelled forward with well-timed transitions; associations are sometimes made with very shot, telling cuts.

After pulling off a perfect murder, Ancelin’s subsequent judgment is absolutely lousy, and it ends up getting several people we care about killed. Unlike Édouard Molinaro’s previous Le dos au mur, this show doesn’t transcend its material — the main character is Lino Ventura’s Ancelin, but his third-act rampage betrays our emotional commitment and our sympathies immediately defect to Lambert and Lilliane. The finale is logical, but unexpectedly cold. The air of calculation is such that we never find out whose fault was the straying of Ancelin’s wife — we have no idea what she was like.

Ancelin becomes his own worst enemy. To eliminate one witness, he ends up leaving a trail of new witnesses to his erratic, illogical actions. Ancelin enlists a prostitute (Ginette Pigeon) to establish an alibi — if the cops find her she’ll be sure to remember his strange behavior.

In structure, Un Témoin dans la ville is also very much like Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows. Both begin with cold-blooded perfect crimes, after which one slip-up leads to a solid hour of exhausting suspense. Both movies feature jazz soundtracks. French saxophonist Barney Wilen reportedly helped with the Miles Davis track for Elevator; here his Quintet provides smooth, appropriate transition music.

If the IMDB is correct, this third show was never released in the United States until a 2014 restoration.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of French Noir Collection is a great-looking set of films, in perfect condition for picture and sound. The package amounts to several hours of vintage French crime thrills, plus good music. The shows overflow with expressive noir lighting. American noirs had abandoned the classic noir style several years before, in search of a more economical photo-docu look.

The last feature is presented in a correct 1:66 aspect ratio. The first two are formatted full-frame open matte, which looks wrong. In both Le rouge est mis and Le dos au mur, the screen has ‘dramatically vacant’ space above and below, that should have been cropped away. The proof is in the title blocks, that float in a horizontal space showing where the frame lines should be. More proof comes with camera shadows, etc., that sometimes intrude in the lower parts of scenes. The flat image is still well-lit and attractive, but the original AR would have been a +plus.

I hope that the disc company didn’t reference the aspect ratios from the IMDB. The first two movies appear to have pan-scanned the Gaumont logo, probably because it was hard-matted. It’s the same widescreen logo as appears on the third picture.

With no extras, the French Noir Collection sends us to the IMDB to make connections of our own between the production personnel and the actors on screen. I hope that more vintage French and Italian crime and murder thrillers show up — many of our favorite European actors started out in them.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

French Noir Collection
Blu-ray rates:

Movies: Speaking of Murder Very Good; Back to the Wall Excellent +; Witness in the City Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailers for Speaking of Murder and Back to the Wall.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Two Blu-rays in Keep case
Reviewed: November 15, 2022
(6832fren)

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