blanche-2 Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Quai des Orfevres" (1947) stars Suzy Delair, Bernard Blier, Louis Jouvet, and Charles Dullin. The story takes place in post-war Paris, where an accompanist, Maurice Martineau (Blier) lives with his singer wife, Marguerite, better known as Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair). An important man, Georges Brignon (Dullin) promises Jenny work, and because she's ambitious, she flirts with him. Maurice is an extremely jealous man, so he finds Brignon in a restaurant and threatens him.Later on, Jenny tells Maurice she is visiting her grandmother, who lives in another town. This gives Maurice a good opportunity to bump off Brignon, especially when he finds the man's address on a piece of paper in the kitchen and realizes Jenny was lying. But when he gets to Brignon's house, Brignon is already dead.Inspector Antoine (Juvet) is assigned to the case, and it doesn't take him long to realize that some alibis aren't very secure.Wonderful film, with the excellent Juvet outstanding as Inspector Antoine, and an excellent performance by Simone Renant as a lesbian photographer, Dora, in love with Jenny. Delair, who was involved with Clouzot, is good as a lower-class woman who loves her husband but wants to get ahead in show business as well.This is Clouzot at his best, with a witty script with some plot twists and a true Parisian atmosphere.

jzappa The extraordinarily adorable Suzy Delair plays a statuesque performer obsessed with succeeding in the theater. Her husband and accompanist, played by Bernard Blier, is a composed but jealous man. When he finds out in a less than preferable way that his flashy wife has planned a rendezvous with a lecherous old businessman with the intention of advancing her career, he loses all control and threatens the businessman with murder. Now, at that point, I must stop describing the film to you because it skates on such thin ice with its twists, revelations, ambiguities and suspense that to imply any of it would endanger it. I am not sure how good or bad that is for this French police procedural emanating from the song- and-dance community, though it is certainly interesting that what we do know throughout is who did not do it. We just don't know who did.The story depends upon the procedure of following clues, where ideal alibis fail and where cautiously created fabrications and deceptions disintegrate. Interestingly, this is a suspense film in which suspense is generated in spite of the knowledge one would traditionally think too much too soon.Quay of the Goldsmiths is the least dark of Henri-Georges Clouzot's films. It's nowhere near as sinister as the shocking Les Diaboliques, as tragic as the riveting Wages of Fear or as eery as Le Corbeau. Maybe it is due to the vibrance of the dance halls and theater settings of 1940s France, which all work as the milieu of this crime thriller.Clouzot both understands and approves of his characters, even the more rotten ones, where he has more of a vindictive streak with his other films. Where he may have had understanding for the scheming women in Les Diabolique or the truck drivers who sink to the level of risking horrible death in order to oust themselves from miserable life in The Wages of Fear, there isn't necessarily support or agreement on the part of the filmmaker, for these are characters who plainly made the direct decisions that determine their fate. All the characters in this more settling film have scenes and moments that endear us to them, even the harsh, cold detective played by Louis Jouvet, who worries about his young adoptive son amid all the trouble and despair that happens in his life at any time with the drop of a hat.There is humor and unabashed sexiness, the latter mostly on the part of Delair, that neutralize the pressure to a degree. Clouzot was quietly practicing his craft, patient till he made his unrelenting later films, in which he would permit his audiences no pardon from the tension.

Cristi_Ciopron First, the obvious—as a cop drama crossed with a funny melodrama, QUAY … is disconcerting ,straightly independent and a menace to banality. Jouvet's aplomb is put to good use in a tough cop performance immediately noticeable by its vigor and exuberant force; his Antoine is not so much a man of intellect, but a man of vast life experience and earthly instinct. QUAY … is not subversive in the sense that today's (and already yesterday's ) philistines enjoy using the word. It is Clouzot's most playful hour. He tended to adapt Steeman's books in a satiric note. (It's said that Clouzot was a big reader of detective novels.) As a director, Clouzot's firm hand is successful. It is not a mystery or a thriller,but a satirical look at a Parisian couple and at the police's proceedings. Those accustomed with Clouzot's masterpiece LES DIABOLIQUES might find slightly disconcerting the multiplicity of things, styles, elements in QUAY ….Here Clouzot speaks about many things, about a couple, and a hidden love story (Simone Renant's for Blier),about the entertainment's world and about old spinsters, about police techniques and an old bitter cop with a boy to raise, etc.. There is a note of exuberance—not only in Jouvet's performance, but also in the film's conception. Quay is a realistic crime drama made as a satire. It offers an outstanding performance by Jouvet as a tough police inspector. Antoine is an old cop with an adventurous past (he fought in Africa ,but did not climb the ranks' stair because of his independent behaviors); he lives with his son, a schoolboy; at work, Antoine is tough and merciless, an able inspector, bitter, intelligent and harsh. It is a role of great gusto, very picturesque. Jouvet composed his character of several defining traits—his clothes, his expression, his funny accent, his brutality, and that mocking air ….Antoine is not made to look more clever than plausible; when he interrogates Blier, Antoine makes mistakes ,and his talent is presented like the talent we meet in real life—mixed with errors and lacunae and defects. Antoine's talent is one that comes also from experience, from daily observation—it's not the almost supernatural _divinatory genius of almost all the famous detectives.QUAY … is multifaceted—it is a realistic crime drama, and also a satire and a melodrama. One can consider it among the first _filmic forays into the legendary toughness of the French police. Long ago Eastwood's and Wayne's harsh cops, there was Antoine. The title is interesting, suggesting that this is a movie about the police, not about a case or a mystery. As craftsmanship, Clouzot was perhaps the best and sharpest in France (in the way that Welles was). QUAY … is very true to Clouzot's nature—a sardonic comic, sharp observations, much psychology, sharp, unsparing irony. The man was first—class when he filmed something—he knew what to shoot, what to choose—see the introductory scenes of this film, with Jenny Lamour's great stage success. Each scene is memorably, _exemplarily shot. Clouzot's technical, stylistic aptitudes were amazing. His style is inventive, satirical, sharp, extremely limpid, ingenious. Jouvet's style was exuberant, powerful, vehement. (Some disliked it precisely for these features. As he had been a great stage actor, his movie style was deemed as too theatrical, etc..) His Antoine is a fine example of what was meant by composing a role, by a composition. Jouvet had a very peculiar physiognomy—much like a menacing bird of prey—somewhat like Van Cleef—yet much subtler, nobler and more intelligent and distinguished. Jouvet had this predatory, ferocious air, and it is useful here, as he performs an old tough cop. One of QUAY …'s sides is that it is a Jouvet recital. He is immediately recognizable, identifiable by the quality of his play (I see that many, watching this flick, do not know it is a Jouvet movie—which is an astounding quality in itself). Fresnay and Jouvet are the two French actors that I admire the most; the first one was revealed to me by a Renoir drama (the famous one), while Jouvet by a Carné comedy. I was charmed to see that Clouzot gave leading roles to both of them.To end, a word about Steeman; he wrote the novel used by Clouzot (who had previously adapted another Steeman novel, as a Fresnay comedy). Steeman was an old school mystery writer, in the Wallace vein. He became quickly outdated with the new hardboiled fashions. When I was 11 I have read one of his thrillers, and liked it much.

writers_reign Clouzot followed Le Corbeau, where no one knew who was penning the poison thus everyone was suspected, with another masterpiece, Quai des Orfevres four years later in which we know from the outset (or think we do) whodunnit. Top-billed Louis Jouvet doesn't appear for forty minutes by which time Clouzot has established a rich milieu of Music Hall, music publishers, etc and a fine cast of colourful characters; Angela Lansbury lookalike (Lansbury appeared in Woman of Paris that same year) Suzy Delair scores as the chanteuse whose desire to improve her lot inspires the jealousy of her husband/accompanist Bernard Blier who follows her to the home of an elderly letch only to find he is already dead. From here things go seriously wrong, his car is stolen before he leaves the premises so his pre-arranged alibi is out the window whilst meanwhile, unknown to him, his wife confesses to the murder to the photographer neighbour, a closet lesbian in love with her, who volunteers to return to the crime scene and retrieve Delair's scarf and as long as she's there,thoughtfully wipes her prints of the murder weapon, a champagne bottle. At this point investigator Jouvet gets involved and from then on it's a case of keeping the plates spinning in the air. Clouzot's output was relatively small but virtually all of it was, as Spencer Tracey said in another context, 'cherce', with Le Salaire de peur and Les Diaboliques still to come. In short this is a must for French cinema buffs.