Inspector
Antoine makes Inspector Maigret look cheerful and chipper. The former was born
into mean circumstances and his police career always keeps him close to his
rough-and-tumble roots. He is not exaggerating when he claims to often identify
with the criminals he investigates, but he still plays a ruthless game of
cat-and-mouse with his prey. The flirtatious music hall star Jenny Lamour and
her nebbish music director husband will learn that the hard way in
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s freshly restored classic Quai des Orfèvres, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.
Jenny
Lamour is a hot number, but Maurice Martineau most certainly is not. He is prone
to fits of jealousy, but it is always misplaced. Lamour is a flirt, not a
cheater—or so she assures him. She is also sure she can handle a cad like
Brignon. The movie producer-tabloid publisher is sort of like the Weinstein of
his era. The old reprobate frequently brings over naïve starlest for scandalous
photo sessions with Dora Monier, a friend and neighbor of Lamour and Martineau.
It is shady work, but a single woman has to make a living, especially when she
is a “confirmed bachelorette.”
Unfortunately,
Martineau made some rather public threats to Brignon before he was
inconveniently discovered murdered. Technically, Martineau is the first to find
the body, but he keeps quiet, because he had constructed an elaborate alibi
with the intention of killing Brignon himself. Somebody just beat him to it.
Unbeknownst to him, both his wife and Monier also passed through the crime
scene that night, so the Columbo-like Antoine should be able to ferret plenty
of inconsistencies in their stories to pester them with.
Quai is a film with a lot
of sly noir details, but it is reportedly quite different from Stanislas-André
Steeman’s source novel, because in those pre-internet days, screenwriter Jean
Ferry did not have a copy handy, so he just adapted it from memory—so the story
goes. Regardless, one of them must have had a solid familiarity with the
backstage workings of music halls and the Quai des Orfèvres (the French national
police known by their former address, 36 Quai des Orfèvres).
Either
way, Quai becomes deliciously fun
when Antoine ruthlessly sets his sights on Martineau, albeit in an almost
sadistic kind of way. Celebrated theater actor Louis Jouvet is absolutely
terrific as Inspector Antoine, who looks like a wisp of nothing, but displays
guts of steel and the cunning of a fox. As Lamour and Martineau, Suzy Delair
and Bernard Blier look like a horribly mismatched movie odd couple, yet we
believe they have that weird sort of bickering chemistry that keeps them together.
Simone Renant is wonderfully sad and sophisticated as Monier, while Charles Dullin
is spectacularly sleazy as Brignon.
