Gaumont at MoMA: Un Temoin dans la Ville

In French film noir, nobody personifies bad karma like Lino Ventura. Unfortunately, his characters were not immune from the payback they dispensed. That is true in spades for the vengeance-seeking Ancelin. On the streets of Paris, what comes around goes around, especially after hours in Édouard Molinaro’s Un Témoin dans la Ville (trailer here), which screens during MoMA’s retrospective tribute to the storied French film production house Gaumont.

Well-heeled lothario Pierre Verdier had been carrying on an affair with Ancelin’s wife until he tired of her and threw her to her death from a speeding train. He managed to wriggle out of a formal prosecution, but he will not escape Ancelin’s rough justice. The steely long haul trucker stages Verdier’s (involuntary) suicide to the last detail, but he did not know the cad had called for a cab. Unfortunately, that means Lambert the cabbie can place him at the scene. Reluctantly, Ancelin starts stalking the witness, just as Lambert’s courtship of Liliane, a company radio dispatcher starts to bear romantic fruit.

Témoin (or Witness in the Night) is based on a novel by the collaborative partners Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, as were Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique. Frankly, it is hard to figure why this film doesn’t rank alongside the latter, because it is a wickedly lean and mean noir thriller. As Ancelin, Ventura is at the peak of his hardnosed, taciturn powers. He was born to play this sort of role and Molinaro brought out the best in him. However, Franco Fabrizi (later to be seen in Fellini’s I Vitelloni and Ginger and Fred) and Sandra Milo (Fellini’s 8½ and Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques) are also completely engaging as the amorously bantering Lambert and Liliane (no slouches in this cast). The unexpected charm of their earthy chemistry really sneaks up on you and adds an additionally tragic layer to the naturalistic, street-level thriller.

In fact, Témoin offers a fascinating time-capsule snapshot of nocturnal Parisian life, circa 1959. Unlike the rather transient nature of the cab driving work today, Lambert and his colleagues (most definitely including the white coat-wearing ladies working the radios) seem to lead a strangely insular and tribal existence. They work together, drink together, and the lucky ones pair-up together, like Liliane and Lambert. Of course that means when one of their own is threatened, they instinctively respond in kind.

Even by high film noir standards, the black-and-white cinematography of Henri Decaï is a thing of beauty. It is also matched by the vintage “crime jazz” soundtrack, featuring French tenor player Barney Wilen (somewhat familiar to American fans through his work on the Miles Davis soundtrack for Elevator to the Gallows and the Jazz Messengers’ soundtrack for Dangerous Liaisons), along with visiting Americans Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Kenny Clarke and drums, and Duke Jordan and piano. It sounds consciously inspired by the Davis session from the previous year, with Dorham’s trumpet more prominently featured than Wilen’s tenor. It is tasty and very effective underscoring the skullduggery on screen (particularly some of Clarke’s percussion solos), but it is not quite a classic on the level of Gallows.

How is this not a more famous movie? There is so much talent in Témoin working at the top of their games and collaborating together with perfect compatibility. This is a terrific film every jazz and noir fan should see. Very highly recommended, Un Témoin dans la Ville screens again this Tuesday (9/6) at MoMA, as part of the Gaumont: Cinema pout tout le Monde series.

Sautet at FSLC: The Dictator’s Guns

You see a lot of life and death at sea.  Skipper for hire Captain Jacques Cournot is about to see more of both in The Dictator’s Guns, a hardboiled caper which screens as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s nearly complete retrospective for Claude Sautet, who is probably best known to most cineastes for his highly intimate late career dramas.

Cap. Cournot has been hired by playboy businessman Hendrix to acquire a sailboat in Santo Domingo from a little old lady in Pasadena who only sailed her once.  However, as soon as Cournot kicks the tires and telegrams her his offer, the good ship Dragoon disappears under criminal circumstances.  It turns out his boss is not who he thought he was, nor is his boss’s boss.  As for the American widow—she’s no lady, she is a femme fatale.

Making haste to the DR, the Widow Osborne more or less clears the captain with the coppers so she can retain his services tracking her boat.  Unfortunately, he does so in rather short order, bringing them face-to-face with a desperate gang of gunrunners, including Hendrix, her gutless ex-husband #1, in the cabin of the listing ketch.  From here, they are off to Key Largo territory, as the Cap and widow play the wait-to-pounce game.

Frankly, this is not a very well thought through scheme, boiling down to the reluctant Cournot ferrying crates of munitions from the off-kilter boat to a nearby sandbar on the dinghy.  Still, the noir works like a charm.  Hollywood character actor and onetime San Quentin resident Leo Gordon is like a walking Sam Fuller movie as the ringleader Morrison.  In the lead, Lino Ventura is like a Lino Ventura character, except perhaps more likable.  Indeed, his Cournot is not a world-weary drifter.  He seems to quite enjoy flirting and partying with the other carousers flocking to Santo Domingo’s night spots.  His expatriate life actually looks like fun, except for the part where he is held captive by arms smugglers.

Sylva Koscina (veteran of a legion of sword & sandal flicks) adds a bit of nostalgic appeal as the Gabor-ish Osborne, also getting down to business rather gamely in the big shootout-siege.  Walter Wottiz’s moody black-and-white cinematography is a pleasingly noir, as is the crime-jazz soundtrack co-composed by big band leader and record producer Eddie Barclay (for whom Quincy Jones once worked) and his label’s music director Michel Colombier.

There are plenty of Bogartian influences in Arms, but it all comes together rather nicely.  Like most of the Nouvelle Vague that never really embraced him, Sautet clearly appreciated American film noirs and had a good understanding of their mechanics.  It all makes for fun, moody stuff and a real change of pace from his later masterpieces, like Un Coeur en Hiver, screening Sunday (8/5) and Thursday (8/9).  Definitely recommended, The Dictator’s Guns screens today (8/3) at the Walter Reade Theater as the Things of Life retrospective continues, culminating with the premiere American theatrical engagement for his 1971 classic Max et les Ferraileurs, starting next Friday (8/10).