Café de Paris

An user wrote that Mirande never set a toe in the studio and it's quite possible :his collaborator Georges Lacombe had a certain flair for film noir and his filmography includes several successful works in this field :"le dernier des six" ,"la lumière d'en face" and his best effort "le pays sans étoiles" ;besides ,both men co-directed another whodunit "derrière la façade "strictly based on the same pattern as "café de Paris" :the owner of an apartment building is slain ,and all the tenants are suspects.

In an enclosed place ,a luxury club called "Café de Paris ", the revelers have a good time on New Years' Eve ,but a hateful blackmailer is around here and many people have a reason to do away with him; at midnight,the lights go off ,and they break into ,not "auld lang syne" ,but into German Xmas (?) carol "mon beau sapin" (="O Tannenbaum "= "O Christmas tree); when the lights are on again, the nasty blackmailer has been stabbed and he's only got a few minutes to live .

The whodunit riddle doesn't begin to touch Agatha Christie's skill: proof positive,it's a journalist who names the culprit before the superintendent! But the atmosphere of the place,with the stooge promising to all his guests "the best table in the place" , the revelers oozing hatred ,contempt ,complacency, and hypocrisy , matters more than the trite investigation; many scathing lines,and some humor as the journalist dictates the latest news,"episode-by-episode."