Chair de poule

A plot thickens in the middle of nowhere in the south of France in the 60s.

The atmosphere is thrilling, with humorous scenes, moments of sexual tension and gangster action.

The soundtrack is astonishing, creating a tension on the edge of your skin through exaggerated sound effects or underlining surreal situations with crazy music.

The actors are just perfect.

A Duvivier masterpiece worth rediscovering, notice his sense of drama staging the American night, framing these lost places: a garage-restaurant night and day, chases on a mountainside... In short, a zigzag story full of twists and turns!

I re read the Chase's novel ten days ago, so I will be able to compare. I rememeber that, back in 1978, I already read the book whilst watching the film, then aired on a French channel. I read in real time, in front of the TV set and the film, scene after scene. I got great and strange feeling to match the book and the movie...I never tried the same experience again. Anyway I did not do it during the whole ninety nine minutes. That said, this is my second or third viewing and an still satisfied, very close to the book atmosphere. Robert Hossein was hired for another Chase's novel adaptation: MEFIEZ VOUS FILLETTES. Bleak, downbeat, as in many Chase's novels. My favorite's Julien Duvivier's film.

Daniel Boisett (Robert Hossein) and his friend Paul Genest (Jean Sorel) are disturbed by the home owner during an attempted safe-cracking. In the ensuing mêlée, Paul accidentally kills the home owner and both men flee the scene in panic. Paul manages to escape but Daniel is shot and wounded by police and is promptly sentenced to a lengthy stint in prison.

Fourteen months later Daniel manages to escape and while out walking on the road he meets up with Thomas (Georges Wilson), who after the pair quickly become friends, offers him a job at the Mountain Relay Station he owns. Daniel adopts a new alias and accepts the offer, but once there he meets Thomas' sexy young gold digging wife, Maria (Catherine Rouvel), and nothing will ever be the same from here on in...

Directed by Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko), who also co-adapts the screenplay with René Barjavel from the novel "Come Easy--Go Easy" written by James Hadley Chase, Chair de poule (AKA: Highway Pick-Up) is French film noir excellence. A picture that carries all the hallmarks of the 40s and 50s classic film noir cycle, and proudly wears this fact as a badge of honour.

Comparisons have inevitably been drawn to The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett 1946), which in itself is no bad thing at all, but this is still very much its own animal. Duvivier never lets the story sit still as a standard formulaic plot, there's always some new twisty addition to the story coming around the corner, unstable characters entering the fray to keep the bleak noirish stew bubbling away.

A fascinating feature of the picture is that our main protagonist, Daniel Boisett, is actually a good guy. Sure he was a safe-cracker, but he's not murderous, and as it turns out fate conspires against him to make him seem like a multiple killer, when he clearly is not. He took the fall for his mate, escapes jail and tries desperately to start afresh with honesty and virtue. But once Maria comes into his life fate has already dealt its deadly trump card.

Women always pay with the same currency...

Maria is an absolute sex bomb, a sizzling siren of sexuality, but as Daniel tells her, it's a pity she's so rotten, because she is, and very much so. Yes, there's a back story to her that stings her emotional fortitude, but she's a bad egg for sure. Things quickly spiral out of control, where even though Daniel knows that Maria is a femme fatale of the highest order, he's caught in a trap, a trap from which himself and the other male players in the piece can't possibly escape.

Visually it's an intriguing picture as most of it is set in daylight up at a picturesque location. It begins in classic noir territory in the pouring rain as the men begin the safe-cracking job, and then during the escape, Duvivier and his cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel produce a magnificent shot of a cop's giant silhouette felling the fleeing Daniel. After this we are predominantly in high light terms, but never once does the sense of claustrophobia dissipate, the atmosphere is consistently hot and sticky.

Impressively performed and directed, Chair de poule is cynical, bleak and like a coiled spring waiting to explode. From that bleak rainy beginning to the explosively ironic finale, this is, basically, an essential viewing for film noir aficionados. 9/10

CHAIR DE POULE is not one of Director Duvivier's finest works, but worth watching all the same.

It starts very strongly, with Hossein and Sorel surprised by the early return of the homeowners during the commission of a robbery. Sorel kills the owner but Hossein is the one who gets shot by police and bundled into jail for 20 years, although his first is spent in a sanatorium due to a bullet in the lung. Guess what? The innocent Hossein, who had never intended to be involved in the robbery in the first place, manages to break free thanks to police negligence.

Just as he did not utter a word about Sorel to police upon detention, so he moves quietly out of circulation without any ill feelings. He comes across Thomas, who owns a diner cum gas station well out of the beaten track - and a sizzling bombshell of a wife (Rouvel) to boot.

That he is immediately interested in her is obvious, but he is too loyal and respectful of Thomas to make the first move. No such worries for Rouvel, though: even as she hugs her hubby she gives him the big come on. And so begins a part of CHAIR DE POULE reminiscent of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE.

But things begin to go wrong when Thomas' brother comes around to pick things for free while the sibling is away. In fact, Thomas' brother is probably the most perfidious low life of all the low lives on display in this very noir film noir. Hossein makes an enemy out of him and from that point on things begin to go awry for all concerned.

I think the off camera killing of Rouvel lets the movie down. It is sprung on the viewer without any explanation, and the ending is a bit of a mess. Even so, CHAIR is interesting, a typical 1950s film noir shot in 1963. I think it would have gained from a better trinity of leading actors - say, Belmondo, Trintignant and Moreau; or Montand, Ronet and Lafont - and a better script.

Despite its flaws, it is well worth watching - especially the first 90 minutes.

Even though every day, you may walk past countless hordes of folk, you may even interact with a huge number of people, often-times in this era, and definitely in my time and place, and in the movie, one's psychological community, the people you have substantial interaction with, is less than a handful of people, and in the end maybe you are simply alone. I think that's brought out by the location of Chair de poule, the "relais du col", an isolated service station high in the mountains. People pass through all the time, but they're customers, cruel and spoilt (I can testify to the bad behaviour of people passing through service stations, having worked at one during my university holidays). So the horde just want things from you, but here so do your "intimate" associates. Like many french crime films of the time, Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954), being an example, or actually all of Jacques Becker's great movies, the prospect of male friendship / solidarity is tantalisingly present and seen as far more fulfilling than romantic love. It's perhaps the only escape in a cruel world. The movie's beautiful scenes are when Daniel (Robert Hossein) and Thomas (Georges Wilson) meet on the col road. A particularly wonderful and wistful tune by Georges Delerue plays here. Later, when the crapola has contacted the proverbial rotary device, a trumpeter on a passing coach-trip is there to taunt Daniel, with another wistful tune, this time mockingly so. Duvivier's is a cruel eye.

I deliberately didn't start with the a plot outline, because it's the psychology, symbolism, and the atmosphere of the movie, rather than what's a rather generic plot that is what it's all about. The plot is, as has been pointed out, a simple noir one of ordinary people being tempted by crime, the middle section has elements of The Postman Always Rings Twice (overtly, and also covertly - there is commentary on where lust ends and love begins). Chair de poule does rise above cliché, and you can genuinely feel how stifled the two Parisian friends, Paul and Daniel are. How long can one stand in the cold? Women aren't perhaps as misogynistically portrayed as in many noir. Throughout the movie men are controllers of safes, from the initial mark, a rich man whose safe is up for robbing, and who therefore counts far more beautiful women as habitual accessories, to the proprietor of the relais du col, and Paul and Daniel, who hitherto worked in a safe-makers factory. It's a world defined by men, where every woman needs a man. Daniel's warm words about Thomas to his wife are instantly sneered at for being a, "man's opinion". Ultimately Maria (Catherine Rouvel) is a character that can be sympathised with, a character with a back story, neither an angel nor a harlot, but a woman. She is still with us and acting in movies at the time of writing! Her face at times in the movie reminded me of a cheetah's at points, she comes across as wild but snared in the world's man-trap.

Top marks for pure villainy go to Lucien Raimbourg as Roux, who had all the shameless rapacity of that great French character from Les Misérables, Thénardier.

Chair de poule is darkly satisfying.