Georges Lautner | First Impressions

‘Corruption disgusts me; virtue makes me shudder’. One of the film’s many great lines, written by Michel Audiard, with Claude Sautet doctoring the structure. In the film, corruption is everywhere: finance, the law, the police, the highest realms of government, all intermingling with the mafia, each out to make a franc. Alain Delon knows this, and he normally doesn’t much care. The only reason he gets involved is because his friend was murdered, no matter that the friend was killed for himself killing someone else. Friendship and loyalty are all. The film is a metaphor for Giscard D’Estaing’s government and a denunciation of the France of the day. Stan Getz on sax seems to blow every inflection of the blues — waves of various kinds of sadness — over the film’s narrative. The film has a superb all-star cast: Klaus Kinski, Mireille Darc, Maurice Ronet, Stéphane Audran, a very beautiful and very young Ornella Mutti. The word pourri in the original French title signifies much more than ‘corrupt; it has connotations of decay,rot, infected, venal. An excellent noir; if it were more visually interesting, I’d call it great. As it is, it has a complex story, like an unfurling spider’s web, well told, a beautifully evoked mood, a consistently maintained tone, with some fine action. It was a considerable success at the box office, a relief for Delon, after a bit of a drought. Delon is so good he was nominated as Best Actor for the César that year

When Delon died, the obituaries acknowledged his beauty and his stardom but were a bit sniffy about his acting. Watching his films from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, mainly in genre movies that he often produced himself, I’m amazed by his range: he plays working class blokes, aristocrats, haute bourgeois, gangsters, outsiders, villains; and he’s convincing as/in all. The only thing I haven’t seen him in is stylised comedy. I’ve also noted his generosity. He often turns over the films, in which he is always top-billed, to his female co-star (Annie Girardot in TRAITEMENT DE SHOCK or Mireille Darc in SEINS DE GLACE, often delaying his appearance until ¼ or a 1/3 of the way into the narrative). He’s completely self-assured, relaxed, and unafraid to surround himself with the very best actors (Signoret, Meurisse, Gabin, Girardot etc., all in this period). And for a man of such beauty, he lacks vanity. Note how he’s filmed in LE GITAN, stubbly, tired, puffy-eyed, from unflattering angles; and think how Warren Beatty in the same period would never have allowed himself to be thus filmed (remember the hassle Beatty put the marketing department through to make sure his crotch was right in the posters for HEAVEN CAN WAIT).

In LES SEINS DE GLACE Claude Brasseur, cuddly and open-faced (he sleeps under a Snoopy blanket) falls in love with a mysterious woman walking on the beach. He asks her out and she eventually consents. She’s afraid. But of what? Is someone after her? Certainly corpses seem to multiply in her wake. But is it her, or is it Alain Delon, her lawyer, completely besotted with her but unfortunately married?

LES SEINS DE GLACE is clearly designed as a showcase for Mireille Darc, Delon’s then girlfriend, and she does have a fabulous body, fully on display, but has a simian lower jaw, which careless cinematography by Maurice Fellous here highlights, and a limited range of expression. That said, this is an efficient psychological thriller, with a surprisingly romantic if dark ending, heavy-handed in its symbolism, making too much use of the zooms so characteristic of the period but sufficiently entertaining. It was a considerable hit.