Noir Diary: Speaking of Murder [‘Le Rouge et Mis’] (Gilles Grangier, 1957)

 To those of us in the English-speaking world, it can sometimes feel as if France’s contribution to the culture surrounding mid-century crime/noir cinema remains an obscure and mysterious prospect. Such a conclusion begins to seem increasingly misguided though, the longer one spends scanning shelves and considering the matter.

After all, Jules Dassin’s ‘Rififi’ (1955) and the films of Jean-Pierre Melville are universally revered touchstones of the genre. Classics like Jacques Becker’s ‘Touchez pas ou Grisbi’ (1954) and ‘Le Trou’ (1960), and Henri Decoin‘s ‘Razzia sur la Chnouf’, (1955), are all available on nice, sub-titled editions, as of course are arthouse/nouvelle vague-affiliated genre entries such as Truffaut’s ‘Shoot the Piano Player’ (1960) and Louis Malle’s ‘Ascenseur pour L'échafaud’ (1958). Claude Sautet’s heart-rending ‘Classe Tous Risques’ (1960) starring Lino Ventura has received a release from the BFI, and I bet your local library can still dig up a DVD of Julien Duvivier’s ground-breaking ‘Pépé le Moko’ (1937) upon request.

Nonetheless though - what unites the films listed above is their quote-unquote “importance”. All are critically acclaimed, top tier productions which - despite their intermittent brutality and nihilism - remain thoroughly respectable. They’re all great movies, no question, but, taken in isolation, can they really furnish us with a full picture of the wider culture from which they emerged?

It’s as if we’ve been given access to the Gallic equivalents of Double Indemnity, ‘Laura’, ‘White Heat’ and ‘Touch of Evil’…. but where are the Parisian analogues of ‘Raw Deal’, of The Big Combo, or of Framed..? Were the stars and directors we know from their more celebrated pictures also battling it out week by week in scuzzier, run-of-the-mill programme pictures? And if so, can we watch them please?

Such are the questions I was hoping Kino Lorber’s inaugural French Noir Collection - gathering three late ‘50s examples of the form from the Gaumont archives which I don’t believe have previously been granted much international exposure - would begin to address. Long story short: it doesn’t disappoint.

Straight out of the gate, Gilles Grangier’s ‘Le Rouge et Mis’ (1957) opens with a sight sure to warm the heart of any French crime enthusiast, as genre heavyweights Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura lead a four-man gang carrying out a stick up job on a street corner bank in a quiet Parisian suburb.

The film’s recurrent theme of violence erupting from placid, everyday surroundings is disturbingly foreshadowed as Ventura, scowling intently in regulation trench-coat, briefly turns his tommy-gun in the direction of a cowering mother and her children who have inadvertently wandered into the midst of the robbery. Pausing, Ventura’s character ‘La Gitan’ (‘The Gypsy’) seems to be thinking it over, before he comes to his senses and ducks into the getaway car - demonstrating a sense of restraint which he will increasingly abandon as the movie progresses.

Rather inadequately retitled as ‘Speaking of Murder’ for English-speaking audiences (wouldn’t something closer to the literal ‘The Red is Lit’, or ‘The Red Light Is On’ have worked better?), Grangier’s film has the particular ice-cold, proletarian atmosphere which defines so many post-war French crime movies down pat.

Certainly, there’s little of the smoky glamour and lethargic ennui which defined some of Gabin’s other films in the genre be found here. Instead, he and his gang conduct their day-to-day from remote lock-up garages, chrome-countered street corner bars and shabby rural outbuildings. Mirroring the atmosphere of dour alienation later perfected by Jean-Pierre Melville (who had directed his first crime film a year earlier), the gang members are squinty-eyed hard cases who’d rather lose a limb than express emotion in front of their colleagues. Everywhere looks absolutely freezing.

Despite this though, Grangier dials back the nihilism considerably here, humanising his crooks, and (with the help of his fine cast) making their interplay rather fascinating. Admittedly, ‘La Gitan’ is indeed the remorseless, taciturn psycho which our initial encounter with him suggested, but ‘Sailor’ (Jean Bérard) provides rather rather more reluctant muscle, whilst Gabin (‘The Blond’) provides a rather more paternal presence, labouring under the strain of keeping the outfit together whilst also affecting the appearance of a legitimate businessman. The fly in the ointment meanwhile is Fredo, ‘L’American’ (Paul Frankeur), the gang’s fixer, a slimy chancer Ventura doesn’t trust as far as he can throw him, but whom Gabin - much to his later chagrin - insists is legit.

With all this good heist movie stuff already in play, I confess I was slightly disappointed that much of the remainder of the film concentrates instead on Gabin’s relationship with his much younger brother Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi, later of ‘The French Connection’), a feckless kid who’s just got out of the joint on bail, but insists on skipping town to hook up with his girlfriend Hélène (Annie Girardot).

Regrettably, Hélène is characterised here in strictly one-dimensional terms, as a greedy, black-hearted bitch who cuckolds naïve Pierre at every possible opportunity, mocking him behind his back and earning the contempt of his far cannier big brother in process. Meanwhile of course, the cops are hovering, keen to pull Pierre in for breaking his bail conditions and hoping they can persuade him to spill the beans on his brother’s outfit to avoid heading back to the slammer.

The scenes between Gabin, Bozzuffi and their elderly mother (Gina Licloz) convey a great deal of warmth, establishing their strained and unconventional family dynamic rather nicely, but beyond that, it’s a shame that the film’s story eventually takes a rather melodramatic turn, incorporating a series of door-slamming familial confrontations, and culminating in a would-be tragic denouement hinging on the consequences of an easily resolved misunderstanding.

It’s difficult to credit that this rather bathetic bit of plotting came from the pen of Auguste Le Breton (whose novels provided the inspiration for about half of the calssics I listed in this review’s opening paragraphs), but… many a slip betwixt page and screen, I suppose.

For the most part, Grangier’s direction here is plain and unobtrusive, devoid of the stylistic flourishes we usually associate with noir, but, perhaps for that very reason, the film’s intermittent scenes of bloodthirsty violence stand out. In particular, a bungled armoured car heist followed by a vehicular chase and massacre midway through the movie really makes an impression, framing outbursts of chaotic carnage against a bleak, uninhabited rural backdrop, whilst the climactic confrontation between Gabin and Ventura (you knew it was coming) achieves an impressive level of intensity.

If ‘Le Rouge et Mis’ can be seen then as a rock-solid exemplar of French crime cinema, its routine story-telling elevated by a seedy atmosphere and an exceptional cast, the second film in Kino’s French Noir set proves a far more unconventional and off-beat proposition… as we shall discover in a few days.