I find myself without the time needed to write, as I’d eventually like to, on the films in this magnificent box set from Kino Lober, so for now I’d just like to draw attention to it.

Three crime films from the late 50:

LE ROUGE EST MIS/ SPEAKING OF MURDER (Gilles Grangier, 1957) is about small-time hoods in Paris who use a garage as a front for their heists. Jean Gabin – every shrug, gesture, look, bit of business both a delight in itself and a component of characterisation – is the gang-leader. Lino Ventura is the muscle; Annie Girardot, the two-timing tramp. There’s an early and very sympathetic appearance of a gay man arrested for soliciting who appears to give Gabin a message from his brother and Gabin insists he accept a tip so he can buy himself a handbag (It’s a lot more sympathetic than it sounds). I loved the tone and the dialogue, and most of all the on-location shooting, now very evocative. Based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, Raffia sur la chnouf, Bob Le Flambeur, Le clan des Siciliens and many others)

LE DOS AU MUR/ BACK TO THE WALL(Édouard Molinaro, 1958)

A man (Gérard Oury) arrives at a crime scene, picks up a body, carries it out of the building, and covers it in cement in a factory wall. A tour de force 17-minute sequence done practically without dialogue. Once the coast is clear, the voice-over takes us into flashback to show us what led to it. Jeanne Moreau’s cheating on her husband with a young actor; the husband begins to write her anonymous blackmail letters. It doesn’t end well. Moreau is so expressive I was tempted to do endless gifs so as to contain the marvellous and minute changes in feeling expressed by her features as the camera dollies into her close-ups. (Based on a novel by Frédéric Dard)

WITNESS IN THE CITY/ UN TÉMOIN DANS LA VILLE (Édouard Molinaro,1959)

I only knew Èdouard Molinaro from his 70s comedies with Louis de Funès and The Cage aux folles films; and the two films in this box set are a revelation. WITNESS IN THE CITY is a truly great film. It begins with a man throwing a woman from a train. He’s taken to court but freed for lack of evidence. That’s not good enough for the husband (Lino Ventura) who finds him and kills him. But as he leaves the house, he bumps into a cab driver, a possible witness. The rest of the film is about Lino Ventura, with his wrestler’s body and impassive face, hunting down the cab driver. It’s mainly set at night. Much is filmed on location, so we see the bars, cafés, nightclubs, cab stands of Paris in the late 50s as well as the people who operate from there. It’s gorgeously filmed by the great Henri Decaë so that the shift in shadows across a face or a street become suspense on their own. A discovery that has made me keen to know more about Molinaro.

Also, Claude Sautet was the 1st AD on Back to the Wall and Jacques Deray on Witness in the City, so all kinds of genealogical interest as well.

There are no extras but for trailers but who needs them when the flms themselves are so great?

José Arroyo