2021 - August

03-08-2021

"Night at the Crossroads" has the reputation of Jean Renoir's least-known sound film. Whether this is justified or not, it is not hard to understand why it has fallen by the wayside. Not as openly political as his later films as well as lacking in a coherent plot, it is easy to dismiss this film based on an early Georges Simenon novel as just another pulp detective yarn made as an imitation of the increasingly popular Hollywood gangster films. Indeed, Renoir's own dissatisfaction with the film and the rumours that it was never completed haven't helped its reputation. However, in "Night at the Crossroads", Renoir has made a film so beguilingly atmospheric and infuriatingly irrational, that it simply mustn't be dismissed.

The plot, such as it is, follows the investigation into the murder of a Jewish diamond merchant found in the garage of a house near a small French village. The house itself is located on a crossroad and belongs to a mysterious one-eyed Dane (Georges Koudria) and his flirtatious sister (Winna Winifried). Opposite the house, on the crossroad, is a garage and next to it, the house of the portly Mr Michnnet (Jean Gehret).

Enter Inspector Maigret (Pierre Renoir), Surete's indefatigable investigator taking charge of the case. He takes a temporary residence at the crossroad which he finds to be a less than idyllic place.

Proceeding in odd fits and jumps and seemingly lacking any continuity between its many twists and reveals, the plot is hardly of consequence in this thriller. Rumour has it that certain key scenes either weren't filmed or were lost at some point during the production. I don't believe this to be the case. It seems to me more likely that Jean Renoir was simply more interested in the bizarre cast of characters cohabitating at this dreary French crossroads and the gothic atmosphere of the Simenon novel than its frequently ludicrous plot machinations.

I didn't find the plot that hard to follow, it is simply unfolded in such an off-hand manner that it seems more incidental than is usual in a crime movie. Most key events take place off-screen. Characters are kidnapped and released, lost and found out of sight of the camera or Maigret who seems to spend most of his time wandering between the three houses as bemused by all the oddness found in them as we are. Most of the twists are explained after they occur in the form of throwaway dialogue and all of the deductions from Maigret seem to come out of nowhere. In fact, in some cases, they seem to be more divinations than deductions since he doesn't seem to have any clues whatsoever.

As I said, it is the thick, gloomy, often bizarre atmosphere that is what drives this film and many of the elements at play in "Night at the Crossroads" wouldn't seem out of place in a David Lynch film. Just look at the cast of characters. Besides the straight-laced Maigret, we have his minute, goofy assistant, a constantly grinning, bear-like local inspector, an accordion-playing garage owner, a melancholic, black monocle-wearing Dane, his apparently nymphomaniac sister, and a greatly disliked accountant who always seems to be running somewhere. Furthermore, just like Lynch, Renoir cuts between disparate styles with reckless abandon. Every scene in this film seems to be shot in a different genre ranging freely from gothic horror to slapstick comedy, from torrid romantic melodrama to American gangster flicks. In between all of this, Renoir frequently cuts in complete non-sequitur shots such as the sexy Danish nymph seductively playing with a pet tortoise.

Surprisingly, Renoir mostly manages to hold it all together with the film's sorrowful, bleak atmosphere acting as a kind of cohesive. The film's memorable location, the country crossroad seemingly between nothing and nowhere, drenched in rain and fog, simply oozes it.

The photography by Georges Asselin and Marcel Lucien is simply astounding and although the film occasionally suffers from the ails of early talkies such as odd framing choices and static, talky scenes, the images on display are simply beautiful. Mostly shot at night or in darkness, there are very few light sources evident in the scenes and quite a few of them are diegetic. There are wonderful shots of figures walking through the misty night illuminated only by passing headlights or entire scenes in which the only light source appears to be a desk lamp engulfed in cigarette smoke. Add into the mix the constantly drizzling rain and you get a film set in a murky world in which morality is grey and the line between good and bad is utterly obscured. The climactic chase scene is shot from the POV of the chasing car, in the night, with only that car's headlights lighting the way. The effect is one of total immersion.

This wouldn't be a Renoir film if it didn't offer up the occasional social commentary and here he uses Simenon's set-up quite brilliantly to his ends. By setting each of the tenants of the crossroads on a different rung of the social ladder, he has them in constant conflict, a kind of brewing cold war. The garage workers are, of course, working-class men whom we are first introduced to mockingly reading the society pages of the newspaper. There is an open disliking between them and Monsieur Michonnet, the recently wealthy accountant whom they refer to as "the bourgeoise". However, when the murder takes place, they join forces in pointing the accusatory finger at the Danes, finally united in their xenophobia. The Danes, on the other hand, show little empathy for the Jewish victim seeing how they're antisemitic. Renoir has a lot of fun portraying this cold war along with several other barbed jabs such as the scene of Parisiennes buying the newspapers being framed to show filthy water flowing into the street gutters. A literal depiction of the term "gutter press".

"Night at the Crossroads" is a far more interesting and innovative film than it may seem on the surface. It is certainly no pulp crime story and can hardly be called a detective film at all since the plot plays only a cursory role. Not all of it works. It is sometimes incoherent and distracting, and its oddity is frequently overwhelming, however, once you accept its flaws and allow yourself to enjoy its bizarrity unencumbered with attempts at understanding it, you'll find yourself engulfed in its curiously powerful, drizzly, sorrowful, gothic atmosphere.

3/4

04-08-2021

The small port town of Concarneau is gripped in fear. A loveable drunk has been shot in the streets in a seemingly motiveless crime. His three best friends, the local doctor (Robert Le Vigan), a wannabe aristocrat (Jacques Henley), and a yellow-pages journalist (Fred Marche) are informed they will be next through the medium of an anonymous note attached to a brick. And thus the cycle of murders continues, each one heralded by the appearance of the titular ugly, large, yellow dog. The famous Parisian police inspector Maigret (Abel Tarride) is called to investigate.

"The Yellow Dog" is a fairly pedestrian retread of one of Georges Simenon's lesser novels the problem of which lies not so much in the intriguing premise as in the ludicrous turns the plot takes. Director Jean Tarride's dullish adaptation does little to fix this, opting instead to merely follow the action with as little invention as possible.

The plot also isn't helped by the fact that Tarride seems to have no feeling for pace. This 69-minute movie is tiresomely padded out with such insignificant distractions as frequent non-sequiturs with a travelling salesman (Jean Gobet), the grating comedic routines of Maigret's buffoon assistant (Robert Lepers), and infuriatingly drawn-out sequences of people walking in, out and through rooms. Now, bad comic relief and poor pacing are part-and-parcel of early talkies but the extent to which Tarride's film suffers from these ailments is astounding. This is in part also because the scenes which are actually important to the plot tend to be so short and develop so quickly that you often miss their importance. For instance, the discovery of the third murder occurs in an almost silent scene that passes so quickly that I was confused in the finale about why the character who was murdered was no longer in the picture. It was only my memory of the novel that helped me keep track of what was going on.

Most of the film takes place in cheaply built, overlit sets foregoing any possibility of atmosphere or stylishness. The main set of the film, the town inn, looks uncannily like a sitcom set. The walls even wobble when the doors are closed. All this is amateurishly shot by Nikolai Toporkoff. The framing in this film is truly awful to the extent that more often than not the centre of the screen is empty while all the action seems to take place on the edges or sometimes even beyond them. All while the studio lights blaze reflecting in windows and ruining the mood of the story.

In the centre of all this is Abel Tarride as Maigret, a poor leading man, sluggish and listless and consistently bored. Rarely does he so much as raise his voice, let alone emote. In fact, in most of his scenes, he looks like he's looking for an empty chair to sit in. This is curious, as at moments, a light seems to shine from behind Tarride's eyes and great intelligence and wit is reflected in them. Sadly, these moments are brief and far between. One senses that in a better movie he could have been a decent Maigret but in this one, he just looks tired and ill at ease. The rest of the cast barely registers on screen.

"The Yellow Dog" is a stagy, uninteresting retelling of a badly-plotted Simenon novel and as such, it is not worth seeing. I doubt it is much worse than any of the rest of the 1930s cheapie thrillers made by the truckload in Britain and America, but as I wouldn't recommend those either I won't give "The Yellow Dog" any slack. Lacking in atmosphere or drama, it is a drawn-out flop.

1/4

04-08-2021

"The Yellow Dog" is not one of Simenon's finest Maigret novels. The premise involving four drinking buddies getting killed off one by one in the moody port town of Concarneau - their murders heralded by the appearance of a large yellow dog - is highly promising, offering a great opportunity for gothic thrills and pseudo-supernatural chills. But Simenon is not John Dickson Carr and while he is a master of psychology, mystery has never been his forte. Thus "The Yellow Dog" gets bogged down in increasingly more ludicrous plot twists until the disappointing revelation which feels more like a cheat than a surprise.

But the real surprise is that Aleksandr Vizir's utterly obscure 1994 "Hostages of Fear", manages to adapt this novel into a genuinely moody little thriller, a film low on action but absolutely dripping in atmosphere and angst in a way only Russians can make 'em.

The general story still remains the same. A small town (here represented almost entirely by a single inn) is gripped by fear due to the mysterious murder of a jolly local drunk (Valery Panarin). When his drinking buddies start getting killed off as well, one of the party, the dissolute Dr Michoux (Romualdas Ramanauskas) tries to hide away from his destiny in the local inn where he is haunted by the figure of a large black dog. But is it fear that is turning the formerly vivacious Dr Michoux into a walking corpse or is it guilt over a long-buried secret? It is up to Inspector Maigret (Yuri Yevsyukov) to answer that particular question.

However, Vizir wisely streamlines Simenon's scattered narrative by removing all the extraneous subplots and blind alleys. He concerns himself entirely and only by the murders, immersing us into a uniquely bleak and depressing atmosphere of a small town in winter. Yes, for once, someone has made the plot of "The Yellow Dog" work, but it is really the feeling of "Hostages of Fear" that stays with you. It is a curiously dour, melancholic film in which everyone walks as if the heavy burden of depression has physically drenched their raincoats. No one seems to be having the least bit of fun in this film.

Igor Belyakov's cinematography is a large part of why this film works as well as it does. Shot almost entirely at night, the film has a kind of nightmarish quality about it, as if occurring in that weird world between sleeping and waking. It is full of muted colours, sickly greens and blood reds. Neon lights barely showing through the thick fog permeating every interior. Even the inn. Heavy backlighting makes all the characters appear like walking shadows, mysterious silhouettes hiding dark secrets. Eery French chansons play on the radio, echoing through the half-empty inn like voices from the past. This is also a very slow movie, but I doubt any other pace would have worked. Still, my attention rarely wavered, held firmly in the grip of the film's surreal atmosphere.

"Hostages of Fear" does fall into several traps common for Russian films of this period. It is awfully talky even though it works so much better when it shows and doesn't tell. Almost every silent scene in the film is a gem including a tension-filled three-minute game of hide-and-seek with the main suspect in an abandoned factory and a lovely, poetic sequence involving Maigret and the dog. It also occasionally slips into the kind of grotesque that passes for humour in Russia. I never found it particularly funny, merely obnoxious. However, one thing I especially give credit to Alexander Vizir for is managing to hide the cheapness of this film. Every other low-budget Russian film from this period I've ever seen tends to resemble a bad sitcom. "Hostages of Fear" has a kind of stylishness that efficiently disguises a lack of budget.

I also very much liked Yuri Yevsyukov in the part of Maigret. He has the absolute right mixture of thoughtful taciturnity and tireless determination that are required to play the famous French detective.

In conclusion, I was really surprised by how effective "Hostages of Fear" is. Sure, like most Simenon adaptations it would play far better on television than the cinema screen where it seems just a tad too small-scale and talky, but it possesses a uniquely bleak and spooky atmosphere which even the novel lacks. In a rare turn of events, this entirely forgotten film has actually managed to be better than the book.

3/4

05-08-2021

I confess that the only reason I chose to watch "Strange Bargain", a fairly obscure 1949 B-movie, is because it was featured in an episode of "Murder, She Wrote". In a very interesting and innovative move, the writers of that episode made a sequel to this film, using some of the same actors reprising their parts, more-or-less the same plot, and scenes from the original movie as flashbacks. I had never heard of anything similar being done, save for a "Boston Legal" episode that used clips from "The Defenders" as flashbacks to the youth of Denny Crane, so I decided to investigate.

The film begins with a veritable humiliation conga the butt of which is Sam Wilson (Jeffrey Lynn), the straight-laced, all-American accountant. All morning he has to endure his childrens' pleas for a bicycle he can't afford and his wife's nagging to ask his boss for a raise. So he plucks up the courage and knocks on the big man's door. Except, instead of a raise, he gets laid off. The firm is in financial straits. Can't afford to keep him on. "Do you know what my bank account is at," asks Mr Jarvis (Richard Gaines). "Zero". In fact, Mr Jarvis is even worse off than Sam. Having to support the lavish lifestyle of his wife (Katherine Emery) is proving impossible and soon he will have to declare bankruptcy. Unless...

In an ironic turn of events, it is Mr Jarvis who asks Sam for help offering him the titular strange bargain. You see, he has decided to commit suicide so that his wife can collect the insurance money. This is where Sam comes in. Mr Jarvis offers him a significant sum of money to help him stage his suicide to look like a murder.

Sam is reluctant at first - shocked, but Mr Jarvis is insistent and one evening Sam receives the phone call. The plan is going ahead. "The fates of my wife and my son lie in your hands, Sam," pleads Mr Jarvis, "Please, don't let me down". By the time Sam gets to his house, the deed has been done. All he has to do is dispose of the gun and make the scene look like a robbery gone wrong. All that is except keep his mouth shut and live with the knowledge of what he has done, which proves to be the hard part.

"Strange Bargain" is a pretty straightforward 1940s B-thriller, the kind of which would become a staple of American television only a few years later. True, the plot is a fair bit bleaker than your usual Edgar Wallace fare, but Lillie Hayward's screenplay does a capable job of avoiding all the moral and social implications of the plot. The predispositions Sam and Mr Jarvis find themselves in are loudly and clearly demonstrated as being their own faults for being poor businessmen so that they don't appear as victims of capitalism and so that the film doesn't appear to be, god forbid, communist propaganda.

No, there's no big message or deeper meaning behind "Strange Bargain". It contends itself in telling its story in a capable, no-frills manner. Just the facts, ma'am. There's nothing unusual or notable about this film, but there's also nothing particularly wrong with it. Director Will Price does a technically sound job keeping the plot moving at a steady pace, Jeffrey Lynn makes for a likeable and relatable lead, and Harry Morgan is the perfect foil for him as the wily police lieutenant Richard Webb. If you enjoy these kinds of films, plodding but perfectly diverting, you will find "Strange Bargain" to be one of the finer examples of the genre.

And what about the "Murder, She Wrote" episode? It too proved to be nothing special in the end. Just another capably made but essentially dullish mystery for Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to solve. The format of the episode is indeed quite interesting but not much is done with it. No in-jokes are made, no attempts at satire or meta-fiction. They just as easily could have filmed new flashbacks instead of using clips from an old and forgotten film. Nevertheless, it is one of the better episodes of the show and just like "Strange Bargain", if you like the genre, you'll find it to be one of its finer examples.

2.5/4

07-08-2021

Such was the popularity of Georges Simenon's Maigret, an indefatigable literary detective who first appeared in print in 1931, that in the span of less than a year three unconnected films were made of his adventures. The first was Jean Renoir's "Night at the Crossroads", the second Jean Tarride's "The Yellow Dog", and the third Julien Duvivier's "A Man's Neck". Of the three, Duvivier's is the absolute best without any doubt. Where "Night at the Crossroads" was disorientating and lacking in continuity, "A Man's Neck" presents its plot with laser-like precision and determination. Where "The Yellow Dog" was cheap and stagey, "A Man's Neck" is artful and atmospheric, modern and expressionistic.

The film begins with a mysterious note found in the pocket of Willy Ferrière (Gaston Jacquet), a penniless scoundrel who likes to live large with his fiancée Edna (Gina Manès). "We will get rid of your Aunt Henderson for 100,000 francs. Send address, key, and floor plan to M.V., general delivery, Boulevard Raspail." Even though not a killer himself, Willy can't resist the urge to go from heir apparent to heir in fact. So, he accepts the offer and very soon the deed is done. Old aunt Henderson is found dead, Willy and Edna are rich at last, and, best of all, the killer, a dim low-life by the name of Heurtin (Alexandre Rignault) has been apprehended. But, what Willy does not know is that he has signed the deal with the devil.

The devil, in this case, being Radek (Valéry Inkijinoff), a terminally ill, nihilistic sociopath who is the true killer of aunt Henderson. Not troubled by such petty things as morals or conscience, he framed the poor Heurtin and is now out to get Willy and Edna. Being that he'll be dead in six months, the money is of no use to him. He wants to play a game. Feel the thrill of the chase. Destroy a man's life and watch him flap about like a fish in the shards of his aquarium trying to put it back together.

And it's not just Willy he'll be toying with. Not content with Heurtin taking all the credit, wanting his perfect murder to be known, he begins a game with the police. Intentionally attracting the attention of Commissaire Maigret (Harry Baur) by his inordinate spending, he starts a battle of nerves with him the kind of which would make the "Columbo" series a huge hit almost 40 years later. The two men, however, are evenly matched as Maigret has more than a few tricks up his sleeve.

And it's not just the plot that seems to be ahead of its time. Comparing the film to the previous two Maigret adaptations it looks as if it had been made 10 years later. Duvivier not only doesn't fall into any of the common traps of early talkies, he utterly subverts them. Unlike most of the films of the era which tended to appear stagey and stilted with awkward dialogue scenes and overused wide shots, "A Man's Neck" is vivacious and atmospheric, featuring several excitingly expressionistic scenes and some really clever and inventive use of sound.

Look at the moody sequence, for instance, of Heurtin stumbling upon the corpse of Mrs Henderson. Shot from high angles and enveloped by long, pronounced shadows it resembles a scene from a Fritz Lang film. Extreme close-ups of shocked, terrified faces and the wild eyes of Valéry Inkijinoff abound as well, none of which would seem out of place in a Mabuse movie. Lang's "M" had only been released in France a year before and Duvivier had clearly been taking notes.

Other memorable scenes include wonderful use of sound. For instance, the aforementioned scene of Heurtin's discovery of the body is accompanied only by the sound of his heavy, anxious breathing. His escape from the police is similarly scored by the barking of dogs which continue to echo in his ears. Also effective is the use of a song being sung by a woman who lives next door to Radek. A song that comes to signify his yearning for normal life and all the beauty no longer available to him due to his illness.

At other times, Duvivier uses sound to achieve a sense of almost documentarian realism. A great scene at a police station briefing is underscored by a murmur of a bunch of cops complaining, talking about their wives, and cracking dirty jokes. The scene uncannily resembles the opening scenes of every episode of "Hill Street Blues" and gives "A Man's Neck" an unexpected atmosphere of realism.

Finally, Duvivier also uses some clever back-projection tricks throughout the film using it first to portray the plodding police investigation and then to shoot one of the most nightmarish foot chases I've ever seen on film.

The casting is absolutely pitch-perfect especially that of Valéry Inkijinoff. With his sly, wide-open eyes, untamable hair, and his Buryat features, he is absolutely magnetic on-screen displaying an indomitable intensity the kind of which would become a trademark of actors like Gary Busey and Christopher Walken.

Harry Baur makes for a superb Maigret. Serene and unflappable but with a mischievous gleam in his eye. The scenes between him and Inkijinoff are the high point of the film, especially an almost silent scene in which they sit and listen to Radek's neighbour sing. A temporary truce between two formidable opponents engaged in a deadly battle of nerves.

The rest of the cast impress as well with Gaston Jacquet as a suitably oily coward, Gina Manès as a temptress short on morals, and Alexandre Rignault as a helpless stooge caught up in other people's game. Utterly shockingly, even Henri Échourin's comic relief is not as grating as they usually are. He's actually quite endearing and his developing relationship with Maigret provides the heart of the film.

Ahead of its time, exciting, atmospheric, tension-filled, and above all endlessly entertaining, "A Man's Neck" is not only the best cinematic adaptation of a Maigret novel, it is easily one of the finest thrillers ever made. Julien Duvivier's expressionistic direction, Valéry Inkijinoff's complex and compelling performance, and a superb plot from Georges Simenon have perfectly conspired to make it that.

4/4

07-08-2021

Charles Laughton plays an irascible version of Georges Simenon's Commissaire Maigret in this forgettable and forgotten American take on the immortal character. "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" is based on the same novel as Julien Duvivier's "A Man's Neck" and suffers greatly in comparison with that masterpiece of the genre. However, even without that reference, this is a dull and directionless picture that seems more fascinated by its locations than its badly told plot.

The film begins with Maigret trying to convince Joseph Heurtin (Burgess Meredith), a near-sighted, two-bit conman to tell him who killed a rich American woman and her maid. Despite being on death row for the crime, Heurtin refuses to speak and Maigret's boss is happy to leave it at that. But our indefatigable inspector is not content. He knows Heurtin is not capable of such a vicious crime and is determined to catch the true killer. To that end, a dangerous plan is executed. The police allow Heurtin to escape from prison hoping he leads them to the true killer.

And indeed he does. The real killer is Johann Radek (Franchot Tone), a ruthless and arrogant man who proves too clever to get caught by such a simple trap. But Maigret is not to be outwitted and the two men engage in a battle of nerves, following each other and setting each other traps and tests to see which one cracks under pressure first. The pawns in this game are the unfortunate Heurtin whom Radek manipulates easily and Bill Kirby (Robert Hutton), the dead woman's nephew who paid Radek to kill her.

The first of this film's many problems can be found in the character of Radek. In the original novel and Duvivier's film, he is a terminally ill medical student whose nihilism and hatred for the world come from his crippling fear of death and desire to avenge himself for what he sees as a great injustice done upon him by fate. In "The Man on the Eiffel Tower", all this complexity is stripped away and we never quite find out what Radek's motivation is. He seems to be driven by a maniacal arrogance, however, his actions in the film can't be justified by that. Not that Franchot Tone really tries to justify him one way or another. Horribly miscast and far too old for the role (Maigret refers to him as "son" even though both of the actors are around the same age), he reduces this complex and fascinating character to a scenery-chewing madman. There are no attempts in his performance at subtlety or any kind of psychology. With such an uninteresting and misconceived villain, it is hard to make any thriller plot work let alone one as character-driven as this.

Charles Laughton, on the other hand, appears to be perfectly cast as Maigret with his large frame and thoughtful manner, but throughout most of the film, he just seems bored. There's very little consistency in his performance. In one scene he sulks in the background, in another, he seems as unflappable as the Buddha while in some he is screaming and shouting at his underlings like a bad caricature of a Texan sheriff. Most of the time, though, he seems simply to be going through the motions, saying his lines and hitting his marks. There's little sign here of the charm and wit that made him so likeable in "Witness for the Prosecution" nor of the screen presence that made him so commanding in "Mutiny on the Bounty".

A lot of this film's failings can be blamed on the director, Burgess Meredith. To be fair, he jumped in to save the film after the previous director left (or was pushed), but his lack of enthusiasm is quite evident. The film has no semblance of pace or momentum. It seems to drift from one scene to another without much energy or urgency. Every scene goes on for too long as actors languidly deliver salves of badly-written text. All this is intercut by endless montages of Paris which are shot with all the inventiveness of stock footage. There are so many location shots that if you were to cut them out you'd be left with a 50-minute film.

Burgess Meredith also shows up in the film playing Heurtin, but his performance is no better than his direction. Most actors who direct themselves in films have a tendency to bloat their parts. Meredith, strangely, does the exact opposite. He barely gives himself any room to act. He rushes through all of his lines seeming distracted and uninterested. Perhaps his directing duties took a toll on his energy but this is not the Burgess Meredith we know and love. He too, like Laughton, seems to be well cast but gives a listless and wandering performance.

It seems the makers of "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" had seen the Duvivier film themselves as several scenes (not in the original novel) are directly lifted from "A Man's Neck". However, they're pale copies. Compare the almost shot-for-shot remake of the scene in which Heurtin stumbles upon the crime scene. In Duvivier's film, this was an atmospheric scene shot in an expressionistic style with long, dark shadows and the sound of heavy breathing. In Meredith's film, the scene is run through with an air of indifference. His directing can at best be described as televisual. None of the shots is interesting or has any kind of deeper meaning.

Stanley Cortez's cinematography is also distinctly workaday. The film is overlit and looks flat. I can't comment much on the colour palette being that the only copies out there are badly faded but there's no evidence that they were anything particularly interesting in the first place. Michel Michelet's grand romantic score is wildly out of place and frequently at odds with what's going on in the scene.

"The Man on the Eiffel Tower" is an unfortunate movie in that Laughton could have been an excellent Maigret were the script and the direction en par with his acting abilities. The result premiered on British television in 1949 and I think it was sub-par even there. On the big screen, it must have seemed miserable. Nowadays, it can be encountered on those cheap 50-movie pack DVD releases and that's where it belongs.

1.5/4

07-08-2021

Joseph Hurtin (Lembit Ulfsak), a simple-minded son of a peasant, is arrested at the scene of a double murder. His hands are covered in blood and his fingerprints are all around the house and yet the indefatigable Commissaire Maigret (Vladimir Samoylov) doesn't believe he is the killer. There's nothing in the terrified, dim-witted Hurtin to suggest him capable of such a beastly crime. So, Maigret arranges for Hurtin to be allowed to escape police custody in order to lead them to the true killer.

"The Price of a Head" was made by the same production company that was behind another, though later Maigret adaptation "Hostages of Fear". That film proved to be something of a pleasant surprise since with its atmospheric direction and excellent leading man it managed to rise above "The Yellow Dog", the lesser Georges Simenon novel it was based on. "The Price of a Head" was, in turn, based on a great Simenon novel, "The Head of a Man", and yet fails to make anything interesting out of it.

This is a distinctly televisual presentation of the novel, straightforward, no-frills and no inventiveness. There's nothing particularly wrong with that approach, but it inevitably results in an unambitious and dull movie. And that's exactly what "The Price of a Head" is. Dull, dull, dull. Every aspect of this production oozes with indifference and cheapness. On television, it would have been fine, but as a theatrical film, such low standards are simply not applicable.

Most of Simenon's novel and its two previous cinematic adaptations revolved around a battle of nerves between Maigret and Radek, the sociopathic nihilist who is the true killer in the story. This time 'round, Nikolai Ilyinsky opts to place Maigret on the sidelines. He spends almost the entire film observing the other characters from the shadows. While this could be an interesting idea in a well-written film, Ilynisky's poor writing results in a series of seemingly endless dialogue scenes between thinly profiled characters.

We have William Crosby (Ivars Kalnins), the oily nephew of the murder victim whose sole distinctive feature is his fake-looking moustache. Then there's his wife Ellen (Irina Tsyvina) whom I kept mixing up with Charlotte (Lyubov Polishchuk), the other female character in the film. That's how interesting either one of them is. Finally, of course, there's Radek, here renamed to Roudek. He is still the same arrogant sociopath from the novels but now he's rather poorly played by Valentinas Masalskis. Made-up like a scarecrow, Masalskis seems to be putting in minimal effort in characterising Roudek. Thus, the fascinating and complex character from the novel is reduced to a comic-book boogeyman in this film.

Nikolai Ilyinsky's adaptation takes some odd twists and turns but eventually ends up at the same place as Simenon's novels. These blind alleys include two additional murders neither of which plays any significant part in the plot. There's also a brief bizarre yet amusing scene in which Maigret plays the saxophone which is probably the most innovative moment in the whole film.

Vladimir Samoylov proves to be a decent Maigret. Wise, calm, and likeable. He is given very little to do, however, so he never quite gets to show off, but I have a feeling that in a better film he would have made a very good lead. Sadly, Maslakis and he share no chemistry whatsoever so the few scenes they do have together fall flat and lack that necessary intensity and sense of danger.

Nikolai Ilyinsky's direction is flat and lifeless. Again, fine for television but a movie requires atmosphere and invention. This film offers neither. And in the few scenes in which there's some suspense, it is immediately undercut by Vladimir Dashkevich's awful score which sounds like an ungodly mixture between an ITC series soundtrack and the "Seinfeld" theme. A bouncy jazz score is not what this movie required.

Ultimately, I am unimpressed by "The Price of a Head", a low-budget and low-ambition take on a Simenon classic. There are good elements in it but they don't amount to much due to Ilyinski's poor screenplay and televisual direction. The plot is oddly jumbled and hard to follow with all its unnecessary diversions and subplots. If you catch it on TV, it'll pass 90 minutes but seeing how the same story has been adapted into a masterpiece of the genre by Julien Duvivier, there's no reason to seek this one out.

1.5/4

08-08-2021

The third and final segment of this omnibus film, "The Testimony of the Altar Boy" is, somewhat unusually, based on one of Georges Simenon's finest short stories instead of on one of his novels. Still featuring the dedicated commissaire Maigret in the lead, it is a wonderful story about how Maigret gently teases out the truth about a murder from the titular altar boy and how a tender friendship develops between this precocious child and child-like adult.

This film adaptation, sadly, is significantly lacking both due to Jacques Companéez's adaptation and Henri Verneuil's direction. Starting with the latter, the film begins, unlike the story, by revealing not only who the killer is but also how the murder was committed which is the central mystery of the story. Of course, none of Simenon's Maigrets is truly a detective story in the sense that the answer to the mystery is the sole point of interest but by revealing it so early, Companéez robs the story of any potential for a final twist and also of all its dramatic momentum.

There is also a misguided attempt to imbue this witty and meditative story with suspense, I suspect in order to make it fit better with the other two segments in the film based on more action-packed works. Thus, the segment ends with a chase through the streets of Paris and a shootout both of which feel utterly out of place in a Simenon story.

Verneuil's direction is disappointingly flat-footed. It is technically sound, utterly adequate and utterly boring. Comprised almost entirely of lengthy wide shots in which actors stand and deliver their lines for what seems like ages, the segment drags on even with its 30-minute runtime. Companéez must take part of the blame, of course, for his overly talky script, but Verneuil fails to give any of the scenes dramatic urgency or energy. They all proceed at the same unhurried and listless pace, without atmosphere or even humour. Simenon's perceptive characterisations are simplified to base stereotypes and the point of the story, about how all adults eventually revert to childhood, is completely lost, surviving only as a sight gag in one of the seemingly endless scenes.

There is also no attempt at making Simenon's characters come alive on screen even when the author himself gives them wonderfully eccentric and amusing characteristics. In the short story, the character of the judge is almost surreally funny, wrapped in a blanket in a sauna-like room. Adding coles to the fire surrounded by walls covered in books. His only amusement in old age is to scoff at the young altar boy as he passes by his window. In the film, he is merely an old man in a wheelchair without any of the eccentricities from the story. The wonderful atmosphere of his room and the scene in which Maigret tries to catches him out in a lie is completely lost.

None of this, I hasten to add, is the fault of the actors who are uniformly excellent. Especially wonderful are Maigret and the altar boy played, respectively, by Michel Simon and Christian Fourcade. Simon is, I'd even go as far as to say, one of the best screen Maigrets. His warm, witty, commanding presence absolutely perfect for the part of the indefatigable commissaire. I wish he'd played him more often and in better movies. Also wonderful is Claire Olivier as the overbearing Mme Maigret and the two of them develop an enjoyable and believable rapport. But the segment centres on the scene between Maigret and the boy and Simon and Fourcade are wonderful together. Effortlessly, Fourcade brings out the grown-up seriousness in the altar boy and Simon the childishness in the commissaire.

But, the wonderful cast and terrific source material are failed by a misguided adaptation and lacklustre direction. If the other two segments are as lacking as "The Testimony of the Altar Boy", I understand why "Full House" is a forgotten Henri Verneuil film.

2/4

16-08-2021

Inspector Maigret (Albert Préjean) is unwittingly dragged away from his long-deserved holiday to solve a baffling case of a corpse found in a wardrobe during a move. His bullish colleague Amadieu (Henri Vilbert) is certain that the workers who transported the wardrobe are the killers but Maigret is unconvinced especially as corpses begin to pile up. Who is this mysterious killer who sends the police anonymous letters signed only Picpus?

Albert Préjean stars as Maigret in this wartime Continental Films take on the famous Georges Simenon character. He is a terrific leading man, cool, charming, witty, and stoic, displaying all the qualities that made such Hollywood actors as Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper and William Holden stars. Of course, his portrayal of the commissaire is about as far from the heavy-set, taciturn man described by Simenon as possible, but it works within the confines of this film.

Indeed, the whole movie seems to owe more to American noir than anything written by Simenon. There's little trace of the sombre atmosphere and the psychological analyses that are the chief characteristics of the Maigret novels. Instead, "Picpus", as directed by Richard Pottier, fills its runtime with numerous twists, pretty girls, and even a climactic fight scene which impressed me with its realistic and brutal nature. Maigret develops a fondness for the sexy private detective by the name of Berthe (Juliette Faber) but is she truly an ally or is she a femme fatale. No prizes for those who guess correctly.

The novel is adapted for the screen by Jean-Paul Le Chanois and the screenplay's a mess. To be honest, I'm not a fan of the original novel, translated as "To Any Lengths" either, with its preposterous plot and cartoonish characters, but Le Chanois' adaptation takes all those flaws and enhances them by adding a whole host of needless characters, blind allies, and red herrings. By the end, he has tied himself up in so many knots, that he doesn't even bother to explain everything forgetting several major subplots along the way. The body count balloons from two to seven, and the final explanation doesn't make much sense seeing how it relies on a series of highly improbable coincidences.

But, for all the shortcomings of the plot, "Picpus" actually works as a fairly entertaining and well-made thriller. This is mostly down to its solid cast, led by the highly likeable Préjean, and reliable direction from Richard Pottier. He does a great job of mimicking Hollywood thrillers with their noirish atmosphere and off-beat cinematography inspired by German expressionism. There are several great scenes set in front of an enormous map of Paris equipped with lightbulbs that shine whenever a crime is reported on a certain street. I was also impressed by Pottier's brief but imaginative use of split-screen in the scene in which Maigret first learns of the crime.

Even Le Chanois' script, when it isn't too busy trying to untangle its Gordian plot, delivers several memorable scenes. As a fan of the Maigret novels, I enjoyed how it picks apart the commissaire's unusual methods and brings them into conflict with his colleagues' standard operating procedure. "Maigret's methods may be fanciful, but they work," says his boss (Antoine Balpêtré) only to later revert his opinion. "Intuition has never brought us anywhere". In a rare moment of poetic introspection, Maigret describes his intuition as his geometry in which "the triangles and circles are alive. They have hearts and heads. Must be understood. The shortest way from one point to another isn't always a straight line."

There's plenty of humour in "Picpus" as well, mostly in the form of Maigret's bumbling, overweight assistant Lucas (André Gabriello). He's no one's idea of refined comedy, but he's also not as grating as most comic relief characters are. He's no Stepin Fetchit, that's for sure. I enjoyed the subtler comedic moments more, for sure, like the third-act sequence in which Maigret goes looking for a suspect at a Native American-themed dinner, or the running gag about slippery parquette. The comedy in "Picpus" is not its greatest strength but it also isn't obnoxious or distracting the way it is in some thrillers from the same period.

In conclusion, "Picpus" is very far removed from Simenon's creation but as a French take on film noir, it is a decent, entertaining effort. I especially enjoyed Préjean's performance and the moody cinematography. It isn't the kind of film to satisfy your need for psychological thrillers and profound characterisation, but it will scratch that rainy-day itch quite nicely.

3/4

16-08-2021

After the theft of a priceless Van Gogh from a Paris museum, Inspector Maigret (Heinz Rühmann) travels to Switzerland where the suspect he's pursuing soon turns up dead - twice. His corpse is first found by a pair of juvenile thieves (Ulli Lommel and Edwin Noel) robbing a nightclub and then by Maigret himself in a hotel across the city. How did the body transport itself? Who did it? And, most bafflingly, why?

This is the plot of the bombastically titled "Maigret and His Greatest Case", or as it's more fittingly known in English, "Enter Inspector Maigret". Despite the grandiose title, this particular case is really nothing of the sort, proving to be a rather routine investigation conducted without much fanfare or excitement.

The screenplay by famous thriller scribe Herbert Reinecker is nominally based on Georges Simenon's "La danseuse du Gai-Moulin" but bears little resemblance to this 1930s Maigret novel. Some changes are indeed for the better, such as the removal of the frankly ridiculous spy elements which were more befitting a cheap James Bond knock-off, but mostly Reinecker's script is a plodding mish-mash of all kinds of twists and subplots. The biggest mistake Reinecker makes in adapting the Simenon novel is reducing the roles of the two juvenile thieves who are the novel's de facto leads and by far its most fascinating aspect. The psychological insight which Simenon gives us into one of them, the retiring and mostly honest Jean Chabeau is the novel's greatest asset. Reneicker, sadly, relegates them to minor roles in favour of focusing on Maigret's investigation.

Reinecker is best known for penning such TV megahits as "Der Kommissar" and "Derrick". "Enter Inspector Maigret" resembles them to a T. Namely, almost the entirety of the film consists of Maigret going from one suspect to another questioning them and trying to break their stories. Besides some attractive location shooting, there is little in Reinecker's script that is in the least cinematic and the film is bogged down by all its talkiness and lengthy, static scenes. Alfred Weidenmann's workmanlike direction doesn't help matters much and this is a movie you can just as easily watch with your eyes closed. There is no real sense of urgency or dramatic momentum, and by the halfway point I was already checking my proverbial watch.

The film was initially slated to have Rupert Davies reprise his role as Britain's favourite TV Maigret. However, he baulked upon reading the script. Wise man. Instead, we get Heinz Rühmann, once Hitler's favourite actor, a workable but largely ill-fitting replacement. At 64 years old, Rühmann is too old for the part and it shows. He sleepwalks through the film with little discernable energy, his sonorous voice hardly ever rising above a whisper. Furthermore, with his white hair, slender build, and refined demeanour, he is a picture-perfect Aryan but never convinces as a hard-working French copper. Rühmann is a likeable actor with an easy elegance but lacks the energy or presence to lead a movie which requires him to be on-screen in almost every scene.

Furthermore, Reinecker's script seems to give him some sort of a superpower since most of his deductions resemble divinations and clues and suspects simply land in his lap without him having to so much as get out of his comfortable chair. For a case that is supposed to be his greatest, you'd expect Inspector Maigret to at least break out in a sweat over it. His methods also lead him to make several baffling and genuinely illegal moves which lead him nowhere but leave us, the audience, in complete confusion.

Equally unremarkable is the rest of the cast none of whom leave much of an impression. Françoise Prévost is supposed to be a vampish seductress, yet possesses neither the sexiness nor the charm to pull the role off. It's not helpful either that she is constantly dressed in a way that wouldn't make a mother superior blush. The suspects are a varied bunch including a drug-addicted drummer (Günther Stoll), a pair of Italian brothers (Christo Neggas and Giacomo Furia) and the two aforementioned juvenile thieves, but none of them seems to relish playing these weird characters. Their performances are dull and unsatisfyingly straight-laced.

From behind the camera, we get Heinz Hölscher's blandly televisual cinematography. He sure makes Switzerland looks nice, but frequently the film looks more like a travelogue than cinema. Gretl Girinec makes some truly appalling editing choices. With some shots lasting less than a second, I was frequently confused as to what was going on. The only person who stands out is composer Erwin Halletz who provides a charming, faux-French theme song. Annoyingly, though, it is the only piece of music that is played in the entire film, over and over again. By the end, I was sick and tired of this nice melody.

"Enter Inspector Maigret" is the kind of film that I wouldn't bat an eyelid at were it a TV movie. It is bland, unremarkable, and plodding in pace, but so are most German TV thrillers. On TV, it would seem appropriate. However, as a cinematic release, it is quite underwhelming and inept. Maybe Herbert Reinecker's script had some promise but it would need a director of Alfred Vohrer's imagination and sense of humour to bring it to life. Alfred Weidenmann simply doesn't cut it with his lifeless staging and straight-laced shot choices.

2/4

16-08-2021

While screenwriter Jean-Paul Le Chanois' previous Maigret adaptation, 1943's "Picpus", examined the unusual intuition-based methods of Georges Simenon's famous literary commissaire, "Cecile Is Dead", his second Maigret film, finds a starting point in the consequences of his fame. As one of Paris' most successful and senior police officers, in charge of all the most sensational criminal investigations, Maigret is a darling of the press and consequently the public. "You're as famous as a movie star," says his boss (Marcel André). An unwanted side-effect of this fame, however, is that Maigret is constantly beset by all kinds of kooks and paranoids with nothing better to do than look over their shoulders at imaginary criminals just waiting to kill them.

One such kook is Cécile Pardon (Santa Relli), a spinster living with her elderly aunt (Germaine Kerjean) whom everyone at the police station believes is in love with Maigret. Every few days, she makes her regular visits to the station demanding to speak to the commissaire urgently. She is certain that someone is breaking into her apartment every night for whenever she wakes she finds her belongings moved around. But Maigret is too busy dealing with another sensational case, the beheading of a young woman, to deal with Cécile's paranoid claims and is furthermore deeply embarrassed by the endless teasing from his colleagues.

Then, one day, Cécile is found dead. Strangled and dumped in a closet in the very police station she sought solace in. Realising they were wrong about Cécile and her claims, the same inspectors who laughed at her led by Maigret himself now put all their experience and skills to work to find the ruthless killer who murdered Cécile, her aunt, and who might be the same person who decapitated the young woman.

Learning his lesson after the confusing and overstuffed "Picpus", Jean-Paul Le Chanois sticks very close to the plot of Georges Simenon's novel. The simple, yet effective narrative is clearly told in an engaging and pacy manner. Some issues inherent in many films of the era are present, such as overly talky scenes and awkward attempts at humour, but ultimately this is a well-told story.

The side is let down, however, by Maurice Tourneur's lacklustre, workaday direction. In one of the last movies he ever made, the experienced silent movie director shows little flair for atmosphere or drama. His shots are static and unimaginative and not helped by his stagy blocking. The director of "Carnival of Sinners" brings none of the expressionistic style on display in that film instead opting to make a rather visually dull and old-fashioned film. Unlike "Picpus", directed by Richard Pottier, which was clearly influenced by film noir, "Cecil Is Dead" resembles more an early talkie.

Tourneur also seems to have encouraged rather theatrical performances from his actors. This method works in some cases and fails in others. Germaine Kerjean and Yves Deniaud, for instance, give good comedic performances as the grumpy old aunt and her sleazy cousin, respectively. They are broad and farcical, but consistently funny. Not as good, however, is André Reybaz as the old woman's destitute nephew. He overacts so much and hits so many false notes he seems more like an extra from "Metropolis" than someone starring in a contemporary picture almost 20 years later. His is the kind of performance that gave silent movies a bad name. Santa Relli, on the other hand, gives an unusually subdued and realistic turn as the mocked Cécile which helps her character stand out as the only sane person in a family of caricatures.

At the centre of it all is Albert Préjean. I very much liked his performance in "Picpus" when he was allowed to play a William Holden-like charmer, a suave bruiser in the quest for justice. Now, in a film with no noirish elements, he gives a more subdued and forgettable performance. His Maigret here is more surly and less charming which consequently makes him a lot less likeable. He seems a little ill at ease in this old-fashioned movie. However, Préjean still possesses a captivating screen presence and is still fun to watch even when he seems to be holding back on the very characteristics that made him a star.

Compared with "Picpus", "Cecile Is Dead" is a less inventive and atmospheric movie but its story is significantly better told and the overall tone is much closer to Georges Simenon's original. In the end, I really did enjoy this movie, finding its story captivating, its characters well-rounded, and the performance of Santa Relli genuinely likeable. The script by Jean-Paul Le Chanois offers a new perspective on Maigret and the day-to-day workings of the police force. I just wish it had been directed with the same flair and visual inventiveness as the first movie.

3/4

17-08-2021

It is a generally well-accepted maxim that in a Georges Simenon novel it's not the plot that's the most important. More interesting than the whodunnit are the characters, their rich psychological profiles and their complex, usually sombre, private lives. This is proven by the fact that the most interesting part of "The Cellars of the Majestic", the third final Maigret film produced in occupied France, is the part before the murder is even committed. This part follows the final day of Émilie Petersen (Suzy Prim), a once desirable French woman committed to a cold and loveless marriage with a Swedish businessman (Jean Marchat). Unable to develop a common language with her husband, she has been slowly but successfully alienated from her son (Robert Demorget) who spends his every waking moment with Mr Petersen and his suspiciously devoted secretary (Denise Bosc). Émilie's every effort to endear herself to her son is shot down, not intentionally but inevitably, due to her son's love for his father. They play cowboys and Indians together, read stories, and spend their days in joy and play, while Émilie is unable to hide her misery and pain which makes her undesirable company.

Suzy Prim does a marvellous job of essaying the poor woman, giving off the distinct feeling of someone with so much love to give but no one to give it to. The plot of the film is kickstarted when she is found murdered in the spacious cellars of the Parisian hotel Majestic and the film never manages to compensate for the loss. The rest of the cast do a solid job and Albert Préjean is as good a lead as ever, but the film irretrievably loses its heart and its most fascinating character with the death of Émilie Petersen.

The rest of the film, thus, is a fairly straightforward policier of the period. We follow the indefatigable commissaire Maigret as he interrogates the suspects over and over again until someone cracks. This is Préjean's third outing in the role after "Picpus" in which he played Maigret as a kind of Hollywood bruiser and "Cecile Is Dead" in which he seemed to be forced into a more low-key and sombre performance. Here, he finds a decent middle ground between the two but is just not as compelling as he was when he was doing his Humphrey Bogart bit. Still, he has a lot of fun teasing the truth out of the suspects and the screenplay offers him many such opportunities. Maigret here is played like a Columbo prototype. He even says at one point, "It is useful in my profession to sometimes appear dumber than you really are". There are plenty of amusing moments in which Maigret, seemingly absentmindedly, chats with the hotel cooks about seasoning and asks everyone in sight what a particular kitchen utensil is for only to then spring a devious trap on his unsuspecting "victim".

Unlike the previous two films, this one is written by Charles Spaak. His predecessor Jean-Paul Le Chanois showed great interest in examining the various aspects of the Maigret persona, but Spaak is more interested in the suspects relegating the commissaire to an observer role, allowing him to come out from the background only to poke and prod at the truth. Spaak nails the nature of Simenon's writing when he has Maigret say that "This investigation keeps turning up over-the-top, crazy people, but they all have something real about them. Some secret sorrow."

The cast of suspects includes a kitchen worker (Jacques Baumer) who may actually be the father of Émilie's child, an eccentric Dutch widow (Denise Grey) yearning for company, her Argentine lover (Jean-Jacques Delbo) who is actually a Frenchman with a fake accent, and a bathroom attendant (Gina Manès) who never turns down a drink and a good time. They're a colourful bunch and well played by a game cast of actors, but Spaak never quite manages to round any of them out. They all do have a secret sorrow, but those sorrows are never completely examined or revealed, leaving their inner depth as something that's only hinted at. Shame.

The real problem with "The Cellars of the Majestic" lies with its glacial pace and leaden-footed direction. At 99 minutes long it is the longest of the wartime Maigret films and feels interminably stretched. This is one talky script and by the third needless dialogue scene about food, you'll be praying for a musical interlude. Spaak does a good job of telling the story in a clear, straightforward manner, but he pads the script out so much that by the end I simply didn't care who killed Émilie Petersen, I just couldn't wait for the film to end. The fault also lies with director Richard Pottier who did such a good job with the first film of the series, "Picpus". Here, his direction is languid and painfully dull, consisting mostly of lengthy long shots and stagy mise-en-scene. Other than a clever scene in which we follow two hotel employees through the entirety of the kitchen in an almost unbroken shot, there is nothing remotely interesting about his direction. This is the kind of film you can watch with your eyes shut.

With serious pacing issues and a lack of an emotional centre, "The Cellars of the Majestic" is sometimes a tough movie to sit through. It has an interesting plot and several highly effective scenes, but overall it simply doesn't hold up as well as its two predecessors. Its interest is, ultimately, more historical, what with it being the final film produced by Continental, the Nazi-controlled film studio in occupied France. For this, however, you'd be more rewarded watching Bertrand Tavernier's film on the subject, "Safe Conduct". "The Cellars of the Majestic", on the other hand, offers little beyond the most basic thriller pleasures and fades in comparison with other, more entertaining Maigret films.

2.5/4

18-08-2021

In spite of the highly enticing promise by the poster that it would be a Giallo take on commissaire Maigret, "Maigret in Pigalle" is actually more in line with the anaemic Heinz Rühmann film than the stylish-sexy euro thrillers of Dario Argento. Actually, the death of the stripper Arlette (José Greci) who claims to have overheard a murder plot was clearly inspired by some early Mario Bava films. She is strangled while nude in the shower by a shadowy figure wearing black gloves. The entire scene is shot from the killer's POV. But the rest of the film is a disappointingly flat reconstruction of the basic plot points from Georges Simenon's classic mystery "Maigret at Picratt's".

The story still begins with Arlette reporting a murder plot in the making to the police then hurriedly recanting her testimony the next day. The same day, in fact, when she will be found strangled in her apartment. Mere hours later, however, the murder plot she claimed to have overheard comes true when a drug-addicted countess is similarly found strangled in her apartment. Commissaire Maigret (Gino Cervi) works fast and soon has a suspect in the form of a mysterious man known only as Oscar. No one knows who he is, but everyone seems to be afraid of him.

Absent from the film, however, is everything that made Simenon's novel exceptional. For one, sadly removed is the subplot which reveals that one of Maigret's colleagues was in love with the murdered girl. This subplot enriched the novel with an emotional dimension rarely present in Simenon's work. But most egregiously missing is the sleazy atmosphere of Montmartre which Simenon so vividly evokes in the novel. The Picratt Club in this movie looks like it was constructed in a tiny studio and resembles more a village hall than the red velveted palace of immorality described by Simenon.

Without these aspects which made the novel so unusual and interesting, this film remains only a decently put-together retread to a fairly standard detective plot. Maigret plods his way from one suspect to another, asks questions, gets his information and moves on. Like the club, the suspects are watered-down versions compared to the ones described in the novel. Fred - the boxer with a heart, Rosa - an elderly wife afraid of losing her much younger husband, Philippe - the homosexual drug addict, Grasshopper - an old thug in the body of a 14-year old boy etc. None of them is as distinctive and memorable in this film which turns three-dimensional characters into cardboard cutouts of their literary counterparts.

The role of Arlette, the murder victim, is somewhat beefed up through several flashbacks which in the end serve no purpose beyond dragging down the pace of the film. José Greci is a suitably attractive young woman but not much of an actress. She fails to bring to life the fascinating and irresistible headliner of the Picratt Club, a stripper who listens to Stravinsky and The Beatles.

Maigret himself is a letdown as well. Gino Cervi plays him like a grumpy comedian alternating between broad humour and neurotic shouting. He is constantly waving his hands and frowning and doesn't seem to be a very pleasant chap to spend time with. I've not seen much of Cervi's "Maigret" TV series which premiered the year before the film, but I didn't much like him there either. He lacks the quietly commanding presence needed to play the indefatigable commissaire.

I mustn't forget to mention the jarringly 60s soundtrack by Armando Trovajoli which be more fitting in a cheap sitcom than a murder mystery. Giuseppe Ruzzolini's cinematography is nicely colourful but ultimately nothing more than adequate.

"Maigret in Pigalle" is very much en-par with "Enter Inspector Maigret", the German film released the same year. They're both decently yet unimaginatively made films that are good for a TV showing yet ineptly dull for a theatrical release. There's nothing particularly cinematic in them, no imagination, no atmosphere, no character. For a rainy day, they're OK, but if you have the Simenon novel handy or anything at all better to do, don't waste your time with "Maigret in Pigalle".

2/4

18-08-2021

Based on one of Georges Simenon's most exciting novels, "Maigret Sets a Trap" is a classy and suspenseful, but most of all intelligent movie about the battle of nerves between two proud men. A serial killer proud enough to taunt the police and a policeman proud enough not to like being laughed at.

The plot is kicked into gear during a lovely morning scene between Commissaire Maigret (Jean Gabin) and his wife (Jeanne Boitel). He's tired having worked all night, she's tireless seeing how she'll be working all day. All the papers carry the news about the latest handiwork of the Marais Killer - his fourth. "He must be thinking," observes Mme Maigret, "I'm the king". "You believe he really thinks that way," asks Maigret, bothered by the idea of a serial killer gloating under his nose. "If he's at all proud, he must be pleased with himself," she replies, not knowing she's just given her husband a devilish idea. In a wonderfully captured moment of warmth, he jokes with his wife. "Say, there's a big brain under those rollers". Mme Maigret doesn't laugh.

Maigret's idea is this: He'll have a number of highly trained policewomen patrol the Marais area undercover. When the killer inevitably pounces on one, she'll make the arrest. It's a dangerous trap, dangerous enough to make all of Maigret's colleagues and bosses shudder, but with enough chance of working for them to let him try it. At his own discretion, of course.

The trap doesn't quite work as planned but it leads Maigret into the home of Marcel Maurin (Jean Desailly), a self-professed architect-decorator. A bit of both and a bit of neither. Untrained but an artist at heart... or something like that. What he is, without a doubt, though is a child in a man's body with lively eyes filled with childish glee. Glee about what? Maigret's unannounced visit shakes him up, though. Enough to shout at his wife in an argument which unusually enough leaves him in tears.

Not that Maigret is only interested in Marcel. His wife, the young and frustrated Yvonne (Annie Girardot) is hard to overlook. A bundle of nerves, at the same time emotional and distant, as if lost in thoughts of unattainable desires. She claims to have spent the night of one of the murderers in bed with her lover. "He cheats on me," she says of her husband, "I was filled with an idiotic fury and I wanted to take revenge. Pay him in kind." But is she telling the truth? Is the childish Marcel capable of such an act? Like a complete inversion of her husband, Yvonne looks like a child, wide-eyed and awkward, but her soul is old, old and tired.

Finally, there's the mother, the formidable widow Maurin (Lucienne Bogaert) and it only takes a few moments in her presence to see how she's the reason for her son's childishness. She's one of those mothers who always wear skirts large enough for their adult sons to hide under. She keeps her artist son's juvenalia framed on the walls of her large apartment. "He painted this when he was 12," she says to Maigret as if the painting doesn't look exactly like it was painted by a 14-year old. "He would have been a great artist if they'd let him persist". Always the mysterious them - the them who've ruined her child's immeasurable talent. At the same time, as she praises her son, she scoffs at her husband. "He was neither good nor bad. He was a butcher." In this case, it seems Jocasta murdered Laius herself.

"Maigret Sets a Trap" is nominally a mystery but it's the precisely observed characters that make it a wonderful experience. Note, for instance, the superb scene in which Maigret interviews a gigolo (Gérard Séty) about a woman who turned him down. "Why are you whispering," asks Maigret. "I'd rather not spread this around. It's not good publicity," replies the harried lover.

There are so many similarly wonderful and witty vignettes in this film it would be impossible to list them all. This is the only Simenon adaptation I've ever seen that is as observant as the great author's novels. This is doubtlessly down to writer/director Jean Delannoy who does an impressive job on both counts. His script is witty and admirably easy to follow despite the many characters and leisurely pace. His direction is taut, artful but unfussy, interesting but not distracting. Although marketed as such, this is not really a thriller, not in the classic sense of the word. It is a masterfully observed human drama, a study in warped psychology but Delannoy dresses it into a suspenseful film with admirable ease. The thriller elements are like sugar to help the bitter pill go down.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Jean Gabin in particular gives a flawless portrayal of a man worn out by the horrors he sees every day. There's great tiredness in him, in the way he moves, the way he plops down into chairs, and the way he quietly interrogates his suspects like a man who's absolutely sure they'll crack. After all, he's seen it before so, so many times. Harry Baur may be a more letter-perfect Maigret, but Gabin is by far the most convincing as a highly experienced French copper.

His team consists of Olivier Hussenot as the eager and comical Lagrume, Lino Ventura as the bullish Torrence and André Valmy as the dependable Lucas. Delannoy lets us into their little tricks of the trade in a series of delectable scenes set in the police station. The way they drive a suspect mad by continually asking him for his mother's maiden name is both hilarious and utterly authentic. It's the kind of realism that shows like "The Wire" so fascinating to watch.

Finally, there are the Maurins. A trio of pitch-perfect performances. Jean Desailly is alternatingly annoying and chilling as the spoiled man-child and Lucienne Bogaert despicable as his overbearing mother. Annie Girardot, meanwhile, manages to elicit even some sympathy as the woman caught in between. Her haunted, expressive eyes say more than a thousand words ever could.

If I had anything negative to say about "Maigret Sets a Trap" it would only be that it is a tad too long, though I'd have no idea what to cut. Every second of it is so perfectly observed and depicted. It is also a shame that it wasn't shot on location. Even though René Renoux's sets are convincing reproductions, their inherent staginess takes a little away from the realism of the film.

But these flaws are so minor, they aren't really worth mentioning. "Maigret Sets a Trap" is a perfect Simenon adaptation in tone, pace, and psychology. It is less of a thriller and more of a collection of perfectly observed human vignettes. With superb performances, atmospheric direction, and a beautiful melody composed by Paul Misraki tying it all together, this is a film that absolutely must be seen.

4/4

19-08-2021

"The day of judgement has arrived. You will die by the end of the Ash Wednesday service." An anonymous letter sent to an ageing Countess (Valentine Tessier) sees the formidable commissaire Maigret (Jean Gabin), the woman's old friend, take an afternoon train to the small village of Saint-Fiacre where he was born, son of the Count's faithful estate manager. "We could never find an estate manager as good. Whenever something went wrong, the Count would say: 'Back in Maigret's day'."

The reunion between Maigret and the Countess results in one of the most touching and beautiful scenes I've ever seen as the old woman yearning for her youth and a man still haunted by it take a long car ride from the train station to the village. "For your wedding, there were tables out on the grass." "I could smell your cologne a mile away." "You were wearing a white dress with flowers." And so on, and so on...

I have never quite seen anyone capture the sadness for lost youth as vividly and hauntingly as Jean Delannoy does in "Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case". The whole film is tinged with nostalgia as Maigret returns to the village of his childhood, the village where he lived with his father, the village his father died in, the village he left his innocence in. Uncharacteristically for the tough policeman, he still sees the village through rose-tinted glasses. He notices only the things that are the same. One gets the impression he is moving with his eyes closed, feeling his way around the Saint Fiacre of his memories.

There's another wonderfully touching scene in which Maigret visits the shop he frequented as a child and finds the same old shopkeeper still working there. "Can I help you, sir," Marie Tatin (Gabrielle Fontan) asks him. "Three pennyworths of candy, Madame Tatin," Maigret replies. It is shocking how quickly this rough-and-tumble rugged man can revert to a knee-high child when overcome with memories. In fact, Jean Gabin is simply superb throughout the film, getting a chance to show a more emotional, wistful side to his tough-guy persona.

And yet, everything has changed and aged and even the nostalgic Maigret will eventually have to come face to face with that fact. The grandiose chateau Maigret remembers as a palace to rival Versaille is now a shadow of its former self. The Countess has sold off most of its contents to pay for the reckless lifestyle of her playboy son Maurice (Michel Auclair). Production designer René Renoux made a masterstroke when designing the chateau set by having all the walls imprinted by outlines of paintings that once hung there. It is a stark reminder that the good old days are gone forever.

Maigret begins recognising this fact by observing the behaviour of the people around him. He is shocked into reality by the way the Countess is treated by her staff, the way the village doctor doesn't bother covering the Countess' chest when examining her heart, and the way the Countess' secretaire (Robert Hirsch) walks around the chateau as if he owns it. As he realizes that, in the words of Thomas Wolfe, you can never go home again, he becomes all the more protective of his memories, going so far as to move to strike a man for saying a bad word about the late Count.

There's a murder in "Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case", of course, but it is far less interesting than the emotional underpinning of the film. It is clearly what fascinated Delannoy and it is the aspect of the film he handles the best. The mystery plot, on the other hand, feels a bit like an afterthought and that is where the film falters.

Unlike the previous Delannoy-Gabin Maigret film "Maigret Sets a Trap", this sequel features a fairly run-of-the-mill plot though involving one of the most diabolical murder weapons I have ever seen. Sadly, the suspects are not as interesting as the ones in the previous film and the conclusion doesn't generate nearly as much suspense and drama.

All the performances are good but besides Gabin and Tessier no one stands out in particular. This is in no small part because their characters are essentially Agatha Christie stereotypes: the priest, the playboy, the hothead etc. There are no attempts on anyone's part to make them as three-dimensional or as complex as their counterparts from "Maigret Sets a Trap". This is a shame.

Whenever the film deals with its Proustian themes of lost youth and nostalgia it is truly a masterpiece. Sadly, these interludes become fewer and farther between as the murder plot sets in motion. Consequently, the film is merely an above-average thriller. This is, of course, no small feat but seeing how great Gabin is and how well Delannoy builds the atmosphere of sadness and decay makes me yearn for a film that would have focused entirely on Maigret's return to the village of his childhood. I enjoyed "Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case" immensely but it had the potential of being a masterpiece had it not been dragged down by a run-of-the-mill murder mystery.

3.5/4

19-08-2021

Jean Gabin had previously played the indefatigable commissaire Maigret in two other films. "Maigret Sets a Trap" and "Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case". Directed by Jean Delannoy, these films were poetic psychological studies, full of atmosphere and complex, interesting characters. In sharp contrast, the third Gabin Maigret film "Maigret Sees Red" is a fairly straightforward crime picture, the kind of movie Jean Gabin was famous for and the kind of movie you'd never expect to see credited to Georges Simenon. This is doubtlessly down to Delannoy's replacement, writer/director Gilles Grangier who made his name directing pulpy actioners with Jean Gabin.

The plot concerns a trio of American hitmen who arrive in Paris and leave a trail of bodies in their wake. Why are they here? Who are they after? Who hired them? These are the questions Maigret and his team of detectives are tasked with finding out while racing against time to stop the gangsters before they kill again. But, unbeknownst to Maigret, the hitmen don't even trust each other and soon little quarrels turn into all-out bloodshed.

This film has the name Maigret in its title and his creator Georges Simenon in the credits but no characteristics associated with his work. For one, there are no intriguing characters or commentary on the human condition here. Just a no-frills police procedural mixed in with gangster film elements lifted straight out of American B-movies. The trio of hitmen is a truly ridiculous group, sporting overdone American accents and the kind of attitude school bullies display on the playground. Especially awful is Michel Constantin, looking like a gorilla in a tuxedo and dubbed over by possibly the worst voice actor in the world. These guys wouldn't look out of place only in a "Naked Gun" movie.

Thankfully, the rest of the film works quite nicely. Especially any scene in which Jean Gabin takes charge. His Maigret is an absolutely superb creation and even though he doesn't get a chance to show off his acting as he did in the Delannoy films, he still brings an irreplaceable, commanding presence to the role. He also has a suitably wry sense of humour and frequently during the film his eyes take on an imminently likeable mischievous glow. He plays wonderfully well against his co-stars especially Guy Decomble as the incompetent Inspector Lognon and Paul Carpenter as a CIA agent.

Gilles Grangier does a capable job and the film moves at a remarkably snappy pace. Rarely stopping for character development helps, I suppose, as the film zooms through its fairly complicated plot. I'm not entirely sure if and how the whole thing hangs together, but the ride never stalled.

I do have to admit that I'm not a fan of gangster flicks. I don't care for criminals and mobsters, so I found "Maigret Sees Red" to be something of a drag and a disappointment after the two brilliant and thoughtful Delannoy films. However, those who do have a taste for these kinds of actioners will surely find this to be a well-executed if average entry in the genre. There's nothing to make it particularly memorable, but it works and for some folks, that's more than enough.

3/4

20-08-2021

Richard Burton plays a rigid, humourless Catholic priest, the kind that gives priests a bad name, in "Absolution", a devious thriller written by Anthony Shaffer, who, for my money, with credits such as "Sleuth" and "Death on the Nile" behind him, was the finest mystery screenwriter in the business. Horror movies have, for as long as they've been around, borrowed heavily from religious imagery and set their tales in the eery halls of boarding schools. Shaffer combines the two and sets "Absolution" in a Catholic school. Thus it is no surprise that this is an atmospheric little shocker.

Richard Burton stars as Godard, an aptly named humourless and rigid priest. The kind that gives priests a bad name. He is the school's feared Latin teacher and a much-despiesed foremaster to a group of adolescent schoolboys who would all rather be drinking and having sex than discussing the rules of confession. So, Stanfield (Dominic Guard), one of the boys particularly thirsty for Earthly temptations, decides to play a cruel prank on Godard by turning his own rules against him. Under the seal of confession, he tells Godard about debauched and completely fictional sexual escapades he has engaged in with Blakey (Billy Connolly), a Communist drifter who likes to hang around the school.

Godard, who has a particular and apparently borderline liking for Stanfield is horrified but the canon laws he holds above all others prohibit him to punish the boy. But Stanfield doesn't content himself with simply frustrating the sexless priest. He continues confessing to Godard a series of increasingly more serious transgressions until eventually telling him he has murdered Blakey and buried him in the woods. Are Stanfield's confessions a continuation of his schoolboy prank or has Stanfield's hatred of Godard made him abandon simple jokes? Either way, Godard finds himself before a torturous moral dilemma as he grasps the meaning of the phrase 'Hell on Earth'.

Anthony Shaffer, a master of the technique of thriller writing, does an impressive job of flip-flopping our sympathies between Godard and Stanfield. He makes sure that the viewer changes his mind from one scene to another about which one is the villain and which one to root for. The rebel or the authoritarian. The boy or the priest. The torturer or the victim. Every twist in "Absolution" comes as a complete surprise delivered with the precision and misdirection which betray a genius at work.

However, all of Shaffer's technical mastery can't sanitize an unpleasant nastiness that permeates from "Absolution". Unlike his previous thrillers, this is not a pleasant movie to watch and about halfway through it ceases to be entertaining. It is a disturbing, mean exercise in psychological torture in which even the victim is sleazy and irredeemable. Richard Burton does such a good job of portraying Godard's pain that I found it impossible to regard this film as a piece of entertainment. Instead, it is an experience akin to watching the vivisection of a helpless creature by an uncaring surgeon.

Nor do Shaffer and director Anthony Page ever truly condemn the behaviour of the boys against Godard. They seem to enjoy it themselves all too much. Their glee leaves a bad taste in one's mouth after the credits roll.

I was also disappointed by the film's climax. After 90 minutes of masterful plotting, Shaffer delivers a final twist that feels like a curious cop-out. A revelation that is neither convincing nor truly necessary, serving only to drag through the mud yet another of the film's characters.

On a filmmaking level, there's not much wrong with "Absolution". Anthony Page directs the film assuredly with the help of John Coquillon's moody photography and an excellent and spooky score from Stanley Myers. The performances are excellent across the board especially from Richard Burton and Dominic Guard. I just wish Page had refrained from melodrama in several key scenes which are both directed and acted in a severely over-the-top manner.

When the film was released on BluRay in 2018, Anthony Page recut the film and the resultant Director's Cut is a tighter, more subdued and ultimately better version of the film. However, this cut doesn't address the film's main failing which is that watching "Absolution" is an unpleasant experience. I've seen films about torture before, but rarely one as cruel as this. Still, I must give my respects to the mastery of Anthony Shaffer and confess that the set-up is riveting and the suspense is effective until the second half which ultimately disappoints and goes too far across the line of good taste.

2.5/4

20-08-2021

Richard Fleischer doesn't get nearly enough credit for being a first-rate thriller director. His use of split screens in "The Boston Strangler" came 4 years before Brian de Palma popularised the technique and his evocation of an atmosphere of claustrophobic insanity in "10 Rillington Place" still sends chills down my spine. Even "See No Evil", a largely forgotten chiller he made the same year as "10 Rillington Place" contains a corker of an example.

The scene is very simple. A young blind woman named Sarah (Mia Farrow) is getting ready for bed. She checks her watch, puts some music on, changes out of her day clothes into a comfortable nightgown. Autumn leaves can be seen blowing in the wind outside. Then the camera pans down and reveals in the bed beside hers the brutally murdered corpse of her cousin Sandy (Diane Grayson). Oblivious to the danger she's in as the killer's still in the house, Sarah continues her evening routine.

Fleischer repeats this gag several times throughout the film but he does it so well that it elicited a gasp from me every single time. It is a silly premise, of course, to have a blind woman continually walking past corpses ignorant of the fact that a psychopathic killer is watching her a few feet away, but with Fleischer directing it works... for a while.

For "See No Evil" to make sense, you have to forget that Sarah still has her hearing. She never notices the breathing of the killer when she thinks she's in the room alone. She never hears his footsteps. You also have to ignore how she continually misses touching the corpses strewn around the house in much the same way Austin Powers always remains just perfectly hidden behind champagne bottles.

For the first 15 or so minutes, this set piece works wonders. Fleischer milks the suspense for all its worth. His camera is voyeuristic, intrusive. The low shots show Sarah's feet narrowly missing shards of glass. Her hands just brushing past the shoulder of her dead aunt. It's all excitingly effective until the joke simply goes on for too long. Then in its third act, the film degenerates into a rather mindless and interminable chase scene in which the blind Sarah has to get past various obstacles to escape the killer. However, the situations writer Brian Clemens puts her in reek of the kind of hackneyed writing that is better suited in a Movie of the Week.

Mia Farrow dutifully performs and she is one of the film's strongest points. Likeable and angelically innocent looking, she's the perfect casting for the helpless Sarah. Less well-cast is Norman Eshley as her boyfriend. He simply has a smug air about him and a face you wish someone would punch. They're not a good match. But it's not as if the performances really count for much since Clemens didn't write them any characters to play. The film relies simply on a series of repeated gags in which Sarah nearly misses running into the killer.

Richard Fleischer still does an admirable job with the laughably thin and repetitive script. The first 40 minutes or so are superb and promise much more than the film ends up delivering. I don't blame Fleischer, though, there's only so much you can do with a single set-piece stretched beyond its breaking point.

2/4

20-08-2021

Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) are a pair of nurses on a biking trip through the French countryside. One's a brainy brunette, the other a ditzy blonde. One's interested in seeing "the real France", the other is more interested in a mysterious dishy Frenchman who seems to pop up wherever they go. An odd couple indeed. Of course, with such a pairing things simply can't go smoothly and after a few miles of light biking, a row erupts. Cathy's had enough. She's tired and would like a rest by the side of the road. Jane will have none of it. She is determined to get to the next village before nightfall so she leaves poor Cathy in a huff. Feeling bad for abandoning her friend, Jane quickly returns to apologise but Cathy isn't there nor is there any trace of her. Instead of a pleasant day's biking through the sunny countryside, Jane begins a frantic search for her friend in a foreign country filled with people who look like they're auditioning for a Hammer movie. Can she trust the mysterious Frenchman claiming to be a policeman? Can she trust the local policeman who claims not to know him? Whom can she trust and where is Cathy?

I've seen a fair few films with this exact plot. From various TV productions such as "Dying Room Only" to Kurt Russell actioner "Breakdown" and superb Dutch thriller "The Vanishing", it is one of those familiar thriller plots exploited to the point of fatigue. However, "And Soon the Darkness" is such an effective and suspenseful film that I quickly forgot all those other films and found myself uncovering the terrifying mystery along with the hapless Jane.

Most of the credit goes to director Robert Fuest. The film has an unusually deliberate pace as Fuest milks each scene for every last drop of suspense. Take for example the superbly unsettling scene in which Cathy, left alone on the side of a road, hears something in the bushes. Such scenes have been part and parcel of horror movies since time immemorial but Fuest allows the tension in the scene to build so slowly it becomes maddening. We know how these scenes end, but by dragging the inevitable out, Fuest provokes the same kind of intense frustration that would make John Carpenter's "Halloween" a hit eight years later. We keep expecting an assailant to pop out at any moment and with every minute he doesn't show up our tension grows. The scene is almost nine minutes long and I spent every single one of those minutes on tenterhooks. It is a masterpiece of horror.

He also gets similar mileage out of the unusual characters to be found in the French countryside. There's an innkeeper (Hanna Maria Pravda) and her husband (Claude Bertrand), a giant of a man riding a tiny motorbike, who continually argue over Jane in French. There's a strict English teacher (Clare Kelly) who keeps muttering indeterminate reprimands to herself. "Loathsome business... Sex... Loathsome..." And, most memorably, there's a deaf old Frenchman (John Franklyn) all too eager to reenact his wartime acts of heroism with a rather sharp knife.

The effect is that of grotesque horror. Following Jane, we are put in the shoes of a stranger in a strange land. People speak over her in a foreign language. They evade her questions, pretend not to understand. All the while, a disquieting sense of isolation grows. This film is all atmosphere and it is one of the more disturbing horror/thrillers I've seen.

Fuest's success relies a lot on the intelligent and sound screenplay written by veteran TV scribes Brian Clemens and Terry Nation. They take an old tale and spin it so well and plausibly that it begins to seem new. They make each character Jane encounters distinctive and suspicious so that by the end of the film there's a strong cast of suspects. The atmosphere of mystery is very strong in this film and Clemens and Nation manage to keep the answers from us until the very end without ever making the film feel dragged out or laboured.

Pamela Franklin is a likeable and relatable lead, but it is the colourful supporting cast who make the film. Especially Hana Maria Pravda as the worried local woman and John Nettleton as the local genderme. I also enjoyed the early scenes between the two women. There's a believable air of animosity between them but done well enough not for it to become tedious or grating.

Finally but absolutely importantly, there's the beautiful cinematography by Ian Wilson who makes the French countryside with its blue skies and green grass look murderously inviting and Laurie Johnson's haunting and exciting score which relies on woodwinds and brass.

"And Soon the Darkness" is one of the very best British thrillers out there. Unbearably tense, atmospheric, subdued and effective. There are both great moments of comedy and great moments of horror in it including probably the most shocking scene of a corpse falling out of a wardrobe. It is not on the intellectual level of "The Vanishing", but I'd watch it over "Breakdown" any day of the week.

3/4