Tag Archives: Back to the Wall

THE ROAD TO SHAME (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959);

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Édouard Molinaro’s first three films — BACK TO THE WALL (Le Dos au mur, 1958); THE ROAD TO SHAME (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959); and WITNESS IN THE CITY (Un témoin dans le ville, 1959) are all noirs, all interesting, all at best only mildly successful when first released, all still in circulation now, and with good reason. Molinaro came up with the Nouvelle Vague but, like Claude Sautet, who was his assistant, was not of it. Moreover the filmmakers and types of criticism that together constructed the idea of the ‘Nouvelle Vague’ were much more enthusiastic about low-budget American crime films than their own indigenous variant, so it would take a while for Molinaro to find a place in the panorama of French cinema, and then only as the director of comedies à la Française (Louis de Funès films) and stage adaptations (La Cage aux folles). I’m glad he’s now receiving recognition for these early films.

The Road to Shame (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959) is about young women promised opportunities as models and actresses, who then get trafficked abroad as prostitutes. Robert Hossein plays Pierre Rossi, a young man so intensely in love with his childhood sweetheart (Estella Blain) that he follows her to this party she insists on going to without him, and thus saves her and breaks up the ring – a facile reading might claim that the message seems to be that a stalker has his uses. A visually inventive film, with a brooding Hossein, evoking a monomaniacal combination of love and lust, impactfully evoked by the patterned shots of his walking to the camera and into close-ups that are then held for a while. In his autobiography Molinaro still delights in his first view of the multi-level set constructed for the mansion where the party is held and all the different types of shots it made possible for him and his team. Magali Noël, immortal for her work with Boris Vian on FAIS-MOI MAL, JOHNNY, here plays a gangster’s moll whose job is to put the girls at ease whilst they’re enticed abroad. The film has a brilliant jazz score by Art Blakey, who like Miles Davies in LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD/ Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Louis Malle, 1958), improvised the music to the film.

José Arroyo

FRENCH FILM NOIR box set from Kino Lober

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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