La ville des silences

The French tend to regard the 1970s as the worst decade of the French cinema, coming hard upon the heels of possibly the best, the 1950s and 1960s.

Director Jean Marboeuf has a good lead in Jean-Pierre Cassel but apart from shots of his handsome face and blue eyes, you really do not get much sense where this private investigator is going in a village where a car just starts chasing a Mini Minor driven by a woman who has just shown her wonderful tuft for about a minute for no particular reason, and who laughs as she is squeezed in her car between the pursuer and a wall.

Makes any sense to you? Me neither. Photography is pedestrian despite the pleasant surrounds, cinematography mediocre and script... well... I could not see any evidence of one.

But some see this 100' nonsensical jumble of the 1970s as a gem, God knows why!

"la Ville des Silences" must be rediscovered, a friend advised me to see it, he told me : "it's like Chabrol, but much more nastier". And yes the atmosphere is creepy in a small village with lot of killings around a great industry, a detective comes to investigate and the atmosphere gets more and more creepy. The story is real strong, the editing is fast with always weird surprises, and the entire casting is excellent. The only way to see that rarity is to catch the video cassette from the eighties, but the one I found is of poor quality, this unknown gem is to be restored on dvd and br.