Henri-Georges Clouzot is the closest thing to the French Hitchcock. He directed
Diabolique and
The Wages of Fear, two films that can stand proudly next to the very best of the master himself. This one is an early one, actually filmed when the Nazis were occupying France, and while not a classic, is certainly great entertainment. It's very
Thin Man-esque, in that it's comedy-crime and a married (?) couple are the protagonists, but it's also very French (references to breasts, prostitution and squeezing blackheads(!) abound). The basic plot is that a murderer who leaves the calling card "Monsieur Durant" on his victims is terrorizing a district of Paris and it falls to our hero, a detective whose first name is "Wenceslas" but whose wife/partner calls him "Wens", to find the murderer or be fired (there's a humorous early scene where the buck is passed down the line of command, where at each exchange the superior gives his inferior less time to catch the murderer, until Wens foresees he is next and his boss just finds a note on his desk saying "I get it - I have 2 days to catch the killer or lose my job"). The film actually opens with a man getting drunk in a bar and paying in huge banknotes because he won the lottery (because he held a door open for another man and he had nothing to tip him with by his lottery ticket). After a woman tries to pick him up ("Do you want a nanny?" She asks, and alludes to her bosom (as if she actually means wet nurse) at which point he makes a comment to the effect that he's been weaned, because he can tell she's after his money). He staggers off into the night, at which point we take the point of view of the killer who is following him until, a la
Peeping Tom, we stare into his eyes as he is stabbed to death. And remember, this is a comedy!
Anyway, Wens catches a break when an old lag he once put behind bars but who now owns a junk shop reveals that he cleaned out an old dresser from a boarding house attic and found a set of "Monsieur Durand" cards in it, so he figures the murderer must live there (you guessed it - it's Number 21). Thus Wens decides to go undercover in the boarding house - disguised as a priest. There he meets a very odd assortment. A general dogsbody who can whistle like any bird - or train, or in general any vehicle, an ex-army doctor (or so he claims - but when Wens asks him which regiment he becomes very cagy) who got into trouble for performing an abortion and who has a limp, a fake fakir who does magic tricks, a doll-maker, who makes dolls with no faces that can stab, to represent Monsieur Durand, a blind ex-boxer and his sexy nurse and an old maid who writes novels that are always rejected. And this is before his own partner shows up, determined to follow him on his stake-out (she finds out where he is by steaming open the letter he left for the police if he didn't make it back alive). She's more of the comic relief, as in reality she is a singer/actress who can't catch a break but is told by a promoter that if she can get in the papers (say, by catching Durand) she will get a gig. Anyway, they team up and eventually do catch the murderer - only there's a twist... that I won't reveal, because everyone should see this film, as it's top entertainment and more modern than a lot of films made in the '80s.
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