A film full of attractions that don’t quite pay off. Alain Delon, Annie Girardot and Renato Salvatore re-unite after their great success a generation earlier in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Luchino Visconti, 1960) but Renato now round-faced and full girth is but one of many Delon sidekicks; and Girardot only appears 2/3rds into the film (why she took this role at the height of her box office is a mystery). Indeed, both are marginal to this narrative. The film is a dual story of two criminals chased by the police: A Gypsy (Delon), an ascetic who eschews even wine, freshly escaped from jail, who has no qualms about committing whatever crime is necessary to help his people; and Yan Kuq (Paul Meurisse), a high end jewel thief from a low-end background who steals as a form of class revenge and as a means to live the high-life. Their paths only accidentally cross when the police keep chasing after one and finding another.
It’s a crudely directed film, with Delon badly dressed at the beginning (see above) with a ludicrous hat, a thick moustache and an earring. He becomes more effective as the film unfolds and common sense begins to assert itself on the costuming. The film does underline the oppression of Romani people but is mostly concerned with capers, shoot-outs and car chases
It has an amazing opening shot (see above) beginning in a beautiful bourgeois beach and ending on a run-down romani encampment; a fantastic star entrance for Delon (see below); a superb score played by Django Reinhardt; and very compelling performances from all the leads.
It’s a film where you can tell Delon is a gypsy because he wears an earring (see below)
In the ‘50s there was a fashion for ageing celebrities such as Dietrich and Noel Coward to go to a clinic in Switzerland – since the basis of the famous La Prairie brand of beauty products — to receive Dr. Niehans cellular treatment, where it was rumoured they got injected with sheep foetuses to reverse ageing. Traitement de choc (Alain Jessua, 1973) takes this a step further and makes the practice a parable for capitalism. In the 1970s France was dependent on migrant workers from Spain and Portugal as cheap labour to fuel their economy. And the film is quite explicit about this, beginning and ending with the arrival of a different set of migrant workers. Here it is not just their labour that is exploited but also their very organs, which are the basis for the rejuvenation serum the rich and powerful rely on. Annie Girardot — then French Cinema’s most popular actress, is a chic career woman who’s made a fortune in prêt-à- porter but is now looking to hold back time. When her gay best friend commits suicide under suspicious circumstances she begins to investigate. Alain Delon, in my favourite phase of his career – still beautiful but visibly ageing; cruel to most women to the point of misogyny but tender and vulnerable to at least one; an archetypally Gothic type of hero but for Delon being too selfish and ruthless to suffer; is the sexy but evil Doctor. Sleeping with all of the female clients seems to be part of the treatment. The film is no great shakes as cinema but is a very efficient thriller, a successful star vehicle for Girardot and Delon – both then at the height of their box-office – with modernist 70’s design and chic early 70s fashions, low-belted dress shirts that hug and show off a figure, light green plastic jackets. It also a quite powerful social critique. Oh, and in keeping with the fashion of the day, both stars appear naked. The film was released in the UK as DOCTORS IN THE NUDE to exploit Delon’s full-frontal nude scenes. There must have been something in the air that year because ASH WEDNESDAY (Larry Peerce, 1973) also draws on the clinic for inspiration, but to different ends. The film has a lovely Brazailian-influenced score by René Koering.
I love the Maigret films; they offer the double satisfaction of thrilling you with some of the worst humanity has to offer – though usefully shown tastefully – and then restoring order; moreover, that rebalancing is itself done in an orderly and systematic manner; one we’ve learned to know and enjoy playing along with.
In this one, Gabin’s first outing in the role, (he would inhabit it twice more, reunited with director Jean Delannoy in Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre / Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (1959) and Maigret voit rouge/ Maigret Sees Red, (Gilles Grangier, 1963), the first images we see are a knife being thrown right into the heart of Paris, then we’re shown the shadow of a pipe in close-up (see below). It seems to me that those images, which start the film, embody the appeal of this type of detective film: violence at the heart of a community and threatening to rip it apart and then the cozy comfort of a pipe, with its suggestions of pensiveness, its indication that brains will win over brawn, that reason will transform chaos into order, that homeliness will be restored. These films do not disown the animal, the emotional and sexual impulses, but they’re always the source of the crime. Intelligence and thought are the way to remove such unruly impulses from social structures: the films are a paean to reason. If Maigret sets his traps correctly, the killer will be caught.
The murderer’s always hidden, filmed partially or from behind, or, like here, in shadows
Maigret tend un piège starts at Place des Vosges, in the Marais district. It’s set in the film’s present but it already has a nostalgic tone. The Place des Vosges has a butcher shop, ladies knit and chat with their neighbours outside their flats, everyone seems to know each other. Then, we’re introduced to a young woman returning from work, a violinist, husband at the café, child asleep upstairs. Of course, she’s murdered. Typically, we’re not shown who’s done it. We see only a gesture of gloved hands re-arranging a belt: a gesture that will prove telling. Then, again, in typical fashion, Maigret is called for (anonymously), we’re introduced to the basics of the case (a serial killer on the loose in the Marais, one who’s already committed four crimes, and is after the same type of woman), and then we’re introduced to the main character (Maigret is longing to retire, we’re made to think he’s alone but then a wife is introduced; he’s got a whole corner display case on top of a cabinet to hold his many pipes, they’ve built a house in the country in the village his wife’s from – this is a film that assumes Parisians have strong links to rural areas); lastly the suspects are introduced one by one, as one by one suspicion is removed until the real killer is found.
A typical moment of humour: ‘Gorilla’ Lino Ventura gets thrown over the shoulder by a woman training to become one of Maigret’s traps
One of the wonderful things about the Simenon films, and true also of this adaptation is how tightly plotted they are. So here for example, the first suspect is Barbereau (Alfred Adam). He’s married to Louise (Jean Boitel) who had an affair with the previous owner of the butcher shop and is thus resented by his widow Adèle (Lucienne Bogaert), and the son Marcel (Jean Desailly). Marcel is married to Yvonne (Annie Girardot), just the type the serial killer’s been murdered. Marcel will be a suspect; Yvonne will be both a suspect and a potential victim. But who has access to Barbereau’s butcher shop? Everything is neatly tied together.
Gabin’s every expression is a joy
The film offers many pleasures: the depiction of milieu, the tight plotting, the way the narrative is constantly interspersed by comic bits (I particularly love Guy Decomble, whom you might remember as the exasperated schoolteacher in Les quatre cent coups/ The Four Hundred Blows (François Truffaut, 1959), ‘performing’ a phony suspect for the waiting press) , Lino Ventura as Maigret’s sidekick, Annie Girardot. But above all there’s Jean Gabin. I don’t know if it’s due to his training in the music hall but he makes everything interesting. He’s on, never overdoes it, but every little gesture, every response, even the act of listening is rendered worth watching. There’s a lovely moment, where he’s at home, tired and wiggles his pudgy middle-aged toes that I think his symptomatic. He conveys the character’s feeling but also gives the audience a flourish; he knows we’re watching and wants to give us something extra. It’s expressive and endearing.
Maigret tend un piège is a well-paced film. Delannoy keeps the camera in constant motion in a way that is unobstrusive yet creates a flow. On the other hand, everything seems to be shot with the camera at eye-level, which I can’t quite figure out as I suspect some of the scenes might have been more dramatic with more variation in angles.
Spoilers Ahead
Advances in representation?
…or casual sexism?
What bothers me most about the film is that what initially seems the casual sexism of the period turns into something more vicious by the end. There’s a scene when one of the suspects, a cabaret entertainer, is at home drinking tea and his girlfriend appears from the shower to show her breasts to the audience and one thinks ‘oh French cinema was so advanced!’ But later we learn how the killer is coded as being homosexual (he’s never had sex with his wife in all the years they’ve been married. It’s what drove her into the arms of the dancer and later to murder; moreover, it’s all the fault of his mother. If she hadn’t driven him to paint and play sonatas, he might have ended up a normal boy, who didn’t kill women because he couldn’t get it up for them. These films, striving, as they do to reassert social order are also quick at removing any kind of otherness. They’re inherently conservative. I don’t generally mind. But I did here.
An excellent critique of the new release of the blu-ray box-set may be found here:
