Une manche et la belle

An unscrupulous fortune hunter (Henri Vidal), recently married to a wealthy older woman (Isa Miranda), is seduced by his wife's sexy secretary (Mylène Demongeot) but the lovers' plans for murder soon get complicated by the secrets all three keep in a twisty thriller adapted from James Hadley Chase's "The Sucker Punch". The prolific pulp novelist's work was heavily influenced by James M. Cain and here it's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE skillfully blended with a heavy dose of Billy Wilder's SUNSET BLVD. It's all there; the attractive older woman bringing a gigolo into her rococo mansion and buying him suits, grabbing his hand at a wrestling match, and pulling him down for a vampiric kiss as if Betty Schafer had convinced Joe Gillis to marry and murder Norma Desmond. Despite the familiar plot machinations, there's enough surprises to keep things fresh and the location filming on the French Riviera gives this cold-blooded noir an "evil under the sun" aura. The stunning Mylène Demongeot's lovely but lethal sex kitten is impossible to resist and it's easy to see how any man would kill for this seductive mix of Marilyn Monroe & Brigitte Bardot.

James Hadley Chase has always been my favourite writer, besides some others, and his adaptations always been for me the movies to search for. The overall atmosphere and plot are here faithful to the book. But not the inner feelings of the characters, the suspense, the best emotional moments of the book. In the novel, the rich woman is nearly ugly, not beautiful at all, whilst here, it is not the case. And, I repeat, in the book, among the greedy and ruthless feelings of the characters, there are some poignant elements, which are totally absent here. The Chase's career offered us novels very gripping during the forties, fifties and a bit sixties, and it slowly disappeared for the seventies and eighties.

Ever since Zola wrote 'Therese Raquin' the formula of the young lovers killing off the inconvenient husband has proved extremely popular with writers and film-makers. In this fine adaptation of Hadley Chase's 'The Sucker Punch' the intended victim is the wealthy wife. Although known as 'A Kiss for a Killer' the original French title loosely translates as 'The Chump and the Babe'. Handsome hunk Henri Vidal is very good as the chump and Mylene Demongeot is magnificent as the babe. The wife is wonderfully played by one of Italy's greatest cinematic prima donnas, Isa Miranda, here seamlessly dubbed by Lita Recio. Very well directed by craftsman Henri Verneuil, beautifully shot by Christian Matras with an excellent score by Paul Durand. The editing by Louisette Hautecoeur is as always, exemplary. The murder scene is brilliantly handled and the ending which in lesser hands might be risible is very effective. I get rather weary of reading reviews in which Demongeot is compared to Bardot. Demongeot is a far better actress but does not have Bardot's notoriety. As for Henri Vidal, how on earth one wonders could such a fit, athletic man die of a heart attack at the age of forty? One then reads that he had a drug problem which would make his premature demise not quite so surprising. This is an absorbing, first class film noir in which committing the crime is one thing, living with it quite another.

Prolific crime writer, Rene Raymond, wrote over 80 thrillers under the pseudonym, James Hadley Chase. These dime novels were extremely popular in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in England and France. One of the least known and least promising of Chase's tales would appear to be "The Sucker Punch", but Henri Verneuil turned it into this excellent movie, which not only has the advantage of his engrossing screenplay (written in collaboration with Annette Wademant and Francois Boyer) but his inspired, powerful direction. The acting of the stars, Henri Vidal, Mylene Demongeot, Isa Miranda and Alfred Adam, cannot be faulted; while the photography by Christian Matras is, as we might expect from Matras, absolutely outstanding.

"What Price Murder?" suffers from a way, way, way too sluggish first half where almost nothing happens and which could potentially cause viewers to shut the film off early: it largely appears to be a travelogue of the French Riviera and the Italian Venice, but for that purpose it would have benefitted majorly from being shot in color. The film does get better in the second half, when it embraces the pulpiness (and the bleakness) of James Hadley Chase's story: there are some interesting plot developments and one "bit of business", in particular, involving a phone call and a recording machine, that I would honestly describe as brilliant. Still, that is not enough to recover from the sluggishness of the first half. Mylene Demongeot is very good here and shows again why she was arguably Bardot's most serious French rival at that time. ** out of 4.