A real tour de force of noir technique, perhaps reflecting the influence of ‘Rififi’s famed heist scene, this sequence boasts expressionistic, John Alton-esque photography from DP Robert Lefebvre, full of brightly illuminated details emerging from inky pools of darkness, fragments of light gleaming off glass and chrome and the rain-sodden headlight beams momentarily blinding us as they flash through the black void. (1)
In visual storytelling terms too, this is riveting stuff, with menacing low angles and rhythmic, Hitchcockian cutting cranking the tension, as Oury is forced to hide his nefarious activities from the attentions of sundry nocturnal witnesses.
It is only once our man’s unsavoury night’s work is over, and he is once again behind the wheel, cruising ‘Lost Highway’ style through the darkness, that - in true noir style - we drift into flashback, and the story proper gets underway.
Unfortunately, this involves the film’s visual style settling down into a far more conventional routine of set-bound chat and exposition, as we join Oury’s character - who it transpires is some kind of construction/cement magnate? - as he discovers that his much younger wife (Jeanne Moreau, fresh from ‘Ascenseur pour L’échafaud’ and already something of a crime/noir veteran by this point in her career) has been cheating on him with a feckless artist/under-employed actor type (Nicaud).
Given what we’ve already learned from the opening sequence, it’s not exactly a spoiler to reveal that Oury does not take this news well.
Clearly veering more toward the James M. Cain-derived, murder/adultery strand of noir than the gangster/crime thread represented by ‘Le Rouge et Mis’, ‘Le Dos au Mur’s concentration on the travails of a desperate, obsessive (and ultimately doomed) central character also brings a strong Cornell Woolrich flavour to proceedings.
Pedants might wish to note that the film also features one of those flashback structures full of scenes which the character recalling the tale couldn’t possibly have witnessed first-hand, but… needless to say, I’m not going to split hairs over details like that, especially given that the plot, based on Frédéric Dard’s novel, actually proceeds to unfold into a rather ingenious scenario, one whose possibilities would have provided plenty of red meat for any contemporary Hollywood screenwriter to get their teeth into.
Rather than rushing straight into a campaign of vengeance after discovering his wife’s infidelity y’see, Oury’s character’s preferred course of action is to instead begin blackmailing the adulterous couple, setting himself up with a fake ID, dispatching the requisite anonymous letters, and claiming back the resultant dough (which Moreau has already finagled from his pocket using an increasingly strained series of excuses) from a post office box in another part of town.
As you might imagine, this instigates an extended game of cat and mouse between the two parties, as, amongst other things, Oury hires a sublimely shifty private detective to gather more evidence against his targets, whilst the couple in turn engage the services of some underworld heavies to track down their blackmailer, whilst both sides attempt to gain the confidence of a barmaid in the drinking hole where Nicaud and Moreau often meet.
All of which adds up to a hell of a lot of plot to wade through here, so it’s just as well that it’s all pretty engaging, fun stuff. Really though, by far the most interesting factor in play at this point is the twisted and desperate motivations behind Oury’s decision to pursue his blackmail scheme in the first place.
Driven on by a toxic combination of vengeance and crippling fear of loneliness, he not only seeks to destroy Moreau and Nicaud’s relationship through the pressures created by his financial demands, he also wants Moreau to then return to him and voluntarily confess the errors of her ways, if you can believe that - sheer desperation blinding him to the realisation of what a nightmare this artificial extension of their long dead relationship would prove, even in the unlikely event it could be achieved.
I mean, we might assume that her character is a woman who has married for wealth and convenience, only to seek solace in the arms of a younger and more exciting partner when she tires of her cold fish husband - but this is just a projection on our part as viewers. Nothing in the film actually bothers to communicate this to us, leaving the errant wife’s motivation, back story and emotional life a mystery.
Likewise, Nicaud’s character also feels like an empty vessel; imbued with no real character traits beyond being shiftless and a bit lazy, he certainly doesn’t convince as the kind of passionate lover capable to tearing a wealthy and glamourous woman away from the security of her marriage, and as a result, the scenes the couple share together fail to develop much in the way of either chemistry or, crucially, audience sympathy.
Conventional movie morality would tend to suggest we should kind-of, sort-of end up on their side, in preference to the scheming, tyrannical husband, but… in this case, it’s honestly difficult to care.
Sadly then, we’re left with a bit of a one-sided love triangle, but thankfully Oury’s extraordinary performance alone proves strong enough to hold it together, maniacal intelligence and emotional desolation battling behind his eyes as he glowers, simmers and broods his way through the film, at times almost contorting his lanky frame like a physical manifestation of the tangled mess he’s created for himself - the ‘hanged man’ per excellence.
It’s fitting therefore that, as a member of that hallowed sub-category of noirs which effectively begin with their endings (paging both Mildred Pierce and Walter Neff), ‘Le Dos au Mur’ dwells heavily on that most noir of themes - man’s inability to escape his fate. In fact, it even verges into Poe-derived gothic territory to a certain extent, as a restaging of the ever-popular ‘bricked up wall’ ending, clearly inspired by either ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ or ‘The Black Cat’, ends up accidentally prefiguring Roger Corman’s adultery-enhanced fusion of both those stories in his 1962 anthology ‘Tales of Terror’. Who’d have thunk it!
(1) Exploitation fans might be interested to learn that although Robert Lefebvre was already a veteran of the French film industry by this point, having worked as a DP since the early 1930s, he actually ended his long career working on a series of erotic / sex films during the ‘70s, including Max Pécas’ ‘Je Suis Une Nymphomane’ (1971) and Radley Metzger’s ‘The Image’ (1975).
No comments:
Post a Comment