This is supposed to be one of the better cinematic Maigret adaptations and, while interesting in parts, and no doubt well-directed (Julien Duvivier directed Pépé le Moko, the proto-Casablanca in our Criterion box set, and there are very German-expressionistic passages, including one where a tall lumbering man stalks through a landscape terrorizing children in a manner that I would be amazed if it was not a reference to Frankenstein), reminded me of why I always give up on Simenon. He manages to do police procedurals that are entirely lacking in suspense. This one was Columbo-esque, in that, while you didn't see the killer commit the crime, it was pretty much obvious who the killer was right from the early going, and no serious alternatives were ever offered. And yet, while there were moments where Maigret circled the killer, if anything the killer had the upper hand throughout, and, as he was dying of tuberculosis, didn't really have much to lose. In brief, the prodigal nephew ("Willy")
of a rich American aunt is overheard in his favorite bar saying to his fiancée (not his girlfriend, who warns him (correctly) that his fiancée is soaking him) that he would pay $10K francs to bump off the aunt so he could inherit (and pay off his exorbitant bar tab). Very shortly thereafter a person says "hey, you dropped this" and hands him a note that offers to take him up on the suggestion, which he reads and stuffs into his pocket guiltily. But he has not escaped the beady eyes of his intended and she stealthily extracts the note and reads it too. She then scans the bar to see if she can work out who wrote it, to no avail.
Next, we see a tall, rather simple-seeming man show up at a large house and sneak upstairs, into a bedroom, where he is startled to bump into a bloody (this film is not bound by the Hays code) corpse of the aunt. He is horrified and, being a dumb klutz, smears bloody hand-and-foot-prints everywhere. Then another man appears,
who clearly hired the other (and who is wearing gloves and little cloth booties over his shoes) and says he found the aunt like this and the other (who had clearly been told simply to get money from the bedroom) should get going and he'll clean up the prints. Well tall-and-stupid gets going but the other one just waits a beat, lights a Gaulois, leaves all the prints and saunters off. The tall man heads off to a country town called Nancy to lie low hiding in his parents' barn, while the other (who is a rather Asian looking actor playing a Czech student called Radek, but is actually Russian - got all that?) goes back to the bar. The tall man is soon caught and questioned by Maigret,
who is alone in believing his protestations of innocence, and arranges a risky stunt where they pretend to break down when ferrying him to a prison and one of the cops slips a note to him to run while everyone's looking at the engine. Then Maigret has him tailed, and he leads them to the bar where Radek hangs out. From this point on Maigret has decided that Radek is the killer, but Radek knows he can't prove it and rubs Maigret's face in it.
Meanwhile Maigret's boss is convinced that the tall guy is the killer, and when he gets away, threatens Maigret and takes him off the case. Anyway, it all builds to a head and Radek alternates between smug arrogance, tortured pawing of first a prostitute and then Willy's fiancée,
longing for an unseen Piaf-like singer in the apartment across the hall, and angry ranting about rich people having the life he deserves. It's not that long of a film but it does drag rather, and is, as to be expected from Simenon, more a character study than a thriller. Still, I was sad when one of Maigret's cheerful young assistants bites it, which seemed a bit uncalled for, although Radek certainly gets his just deserts
(and redeems himself a bit by exonerating the big lug with his dying breath. All in all, a well-made if not especially enjoyable film. Still, not as extreme in either direction as another Simenon adaptation I regret watching called M. Hire, which may be the most depressing film I've ever seen. Odd that Maigret is such a content, placid individual when his author has such a jaded view of the world.
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