L'uomo della torre Eiffel

This clever suspenser from the French Maigret novels is undone by first-time director Meredith. The plot revolves around the murder of a wealthy woman and her maid one dark Parisian night. A dandy living off his aunt wishes her dead in public and catches the ear of Radek, a desperate fellow who is very clever but also a bit loopy (cast Gary Oldman in the remake).

Radek engineers a fiendish scheme to implicate a simple tinker in the crime, collect his fee, and lead Inspector Maigret down the garden path. The details are delicious--if you can follow them--and the characters (the dandy, his wife, his mistress, the tinker and his wife, the inspector and his detectives, and the arrogant killer) are interesting enough for three movies. But Meredith allows the plot to get muddy and doesn't really pull the best performances out of his actors (including himself).

Radek's manipulation of the other characters is real genius (for example, he gets others to search for the murder weapon while the cops are tailing him). The Parisian setting is terrific, and the spectacular climax atop the Eiffel Tower is not to be missed, altho it's a bit contrived. The result is a decent film, but Hitchcock would have hit this one out of the park.

Note: The version I saw was from the 50 Mystery Classics DVD set. It's in color, but very faded. However, I actually found its desaturated look to be a pleasant medium between full color and black and white.

Dedicated film buffs will find only three elements of interest in this

otherwise disappointing production.

1. It was shot in Anscocolor, a process originally developed in Germany

designed to compete with Technicolor which it did with some success into

the 1950's. It's use here is unintentionally amusing because in the VHS

version it has been so badly degraded that rather than full color most

of the scenes appear as sepia-toned with the exception of Burgess

Meredith's hair which is an incongruous flaming red!

Anscocolor was used successfully in a number of films during this same

era such as The Student Prince, Brigadoon, Take the High Ground (with

Richard Widmark) and The Long, Long Trailer starring Lucille Ball and

Desi Arnaz.

2. The atmosphere of post-war Paris is used to good effect and is

historically interesting, but still meager compensation for a dull,

plodding narrative.

3. While Burgess Meredith is listed as the director there were actually

two others. Irving Allen, who later went on to become a noted producer, was replaced

at the insistence of Charles Laughton who then directed the scenes in

which Meredith appeared.

If you are fan of Georges Simenon's detective novels, you will also be

annoyed by Laughton's uninspired portrayal of the iconic Inspector

Maigret.....

I'd read about this movie years ago (and nearly bought a DVD at the supermarket, but passed) so I was pleased to see it on PBS last night. It does sustain interest but ultimately isn't very satisfying. Parisian locations are very nice and lend the right touch of authenticity to Simenon's tale, but the most disappointing element is the cast. As the villain (spoiler?) Franchot Tone (who also co-produced) begins well in his quieter scenes but as his megalomania takes over he simply shouts his way through the part. Meredith plays a mousy character he's done countless times (the glasses gimmick would be used again, memorably, in a "Twilight Zone" episode). Most unfortunate is Charles Laughton, an actor I rarely find less than hugely entertaining (even in ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD) who in this film just can't seem to find a handle for his character, coming across as erratic and boring. The only actor who emerges with professional honor intact is Wilfred Hyde White, who shines briefly in a small cameo.

The climactic chase on the Eiffel Tower, however, is a vertigo inducing delight, marred only slightly by unfortunate use of a dummy. A movie worth seeing once, especially for the finale, but not more than that.

As I started watching The Man On the Eiffel Tower it looked like it was going to go in the direction of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Robert Hutton is having a sit down with his wife Patricia Roc and his mistress Jean Wallace in a Paris cafe. He gets an offer from Franchot Tone who was all ears that he'd kill Hutton's aunt who controls the family pursestrings so that Hutton could be independent.

Tone doesn't lack for chops. He not only does the deed with a maid thrown in for good measure, he manages to pin the crime on milquetoast Burgess Meredith who just happened on the scene.

Fortunately police inspector Maigret as played by Charles Laughton doesn't buy the pat scenario. He turns up Tone as a suspect, but he can't quite pin it on him. Tone's character reeks of Nietzchean superiority and France had just gotten liberated from a country that bought into that philosophy. Probably for today's audience, especially an American one, that particular dynamic can't be appreciated.

Even an escape allowed by the Paris police by Meredith blows up in Laughton's face and threatens to ruin the career of Inspector Maigret. Fortunately Laughton has a few tricks up his sleeve.

What we have in The Man On the Eiffel Tower is three very distinguished players from stage and screen who got together and made the film almost as a lark. Tone spent his entire film career trying to get out from under typecasting as a debonair gentleman in tails who usually loses the girl in the end to a bigger name. Right after this was done Franchot Tone did exactly that role in Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom. His role here as Radek is certainly miles away from his usual parts. Tone produced this as he also produced another independent film the year before, Jigsaw, which was shot in New York.

He got friend Burgess Meredith to direct and play the stooge. The story unfortunately does sag at times until the climax chase scene on the Eiffel Tower. That whole sequence is almost like The Third Man except where Harry Lime seeks escape in the sewers of Vienna, superman Tone leads his pursuers up the Eiffel Tower. In the end though he's not quite the superman he thinks he is.

Charles Laughton made a nice Inspector Maigret. This is the second French police inspector of literature he's done. But there sure is a world of difference between Maigret and Javert of Les Miserables. In fact Laughton is far more like Sir Wilfred Robards in Witness for the Prosecution than Javert.

It's too bad that director Meredith didn't have the kind of computer generated special effects and had to rely on brave stunt men and actors to do the job. If Man on the Eiffel Tower were filmed today, I'm sure it would have been far better.

This criticism is almost a cliché, but Alfred Hitchcock could have really done something with The Man on the Eiffel Tower.

The exciting finale is by far the best part of this movie, which is an adaptation of one of Georges Simenon's crime stories featuring Inspector Maigret. Most of the movie is rather uneven, although it does have some interesting moments. Except for Maigret, who is played by Charles Laughton, most of the characters never really come to life, which keeps the story from being as involving as it could have been.

The Parisian cinematography helps sustain it through some of its murkier stretches, and it is likely that it might have been more impressive visually in its original state. Most or all of the prints on home video or television airings now have most of the color washed out of them, giving it a drab appearance that probably does not do justice to the original camera work.

The story has some interesting features in itself, with a murder plot involving several persons in one capacity or other, and Maigret engaged in a battle of wits with the killer, leading up to the finale on the Eiffel Tower. This lengthy sequence features some well-chosen views, and at times they create a dizzying feeling of suspense. Director Burgess Meredith's technique is unexceptional in the rest of the movie, but in this sequence it works quite well, and of course it had to overcome the technical challenges involved without the aid of computer imagery.

Most of the movie is really of interest only for some scenery, the curiosity value, and perhaps for the cast, but the exciting finale makes up for a lot of its weaknesses. If nothing else, the finale is worth watching for its own sake.