Autopsia di un mostro

The small daughter of a female police officer (played by Annie Girardot) has been kidnapped and a ransom letter has been received. The ransom is paid, but the small girl is murdered anyhow. At last mother finds out who did it. Someone very close to her. Out of jealousy. "Every family has its cross to bear", so the title of this film says. It is a well made film, with a lot of suspense, but not a merry one.

The film starts, the credits roll, Annie Girardots face fills the screen and the music begins. From the very first sequence on, the film is as wonderfully atmospheric as a French criminal story of the 70s can be. Every detail perfectly fits in this disturbing story of, basically, a woman's suffering. She suffers in the face of a horrible crime and it's even more horrible solution. Girardot is a brilliant, utterly convincing actress. Her performance alone is worth all cost and search for this rare gem. On the one hand, not a film to set you in good mood; and there's no relaxing finale, anyway. But, on the other hand, a highly tense story and technically a lesson on how crime flicks used to be made with respect to narration, thrill and atmosphere. Note: A few striking similarities may be found in the much later "The Clearing".

"A chacun son enfer" (everyone has his cross to bear) is a horrible story,in which a mother discovers that ,after the worst (her daughter is kidnapped,then killed) ,there can be something even worse.You do not believe me?Well see yourself.Annie Girardot gives an over-the-top performance which never gives the audience any respite ,beginning with her scene at the radio station where she urges the abductors to have pity on her child.

There's a strange similarity between Girardot's character and Sophia Loren's in Cayatte's "Verdict" (1974).But here enough is enough:the plot becomes some time obscene and the sordidness of the situation is depicted with no regard to propriety.Nuance had never been Cayatte's forte ,but here he goes too far.Whereas former works were strong pleas against death penalty ,miscarriages of justice and innocent people's plight,this one has no other purpose than to provide the audience with cheap thrills.

Cinema and television offer a steady flow of works (including the evening news) that revel in violence while purporting to denounce it. Cayatte's / Girardot's heroine is indeed a spectacle of horrific suffering. But this movie assaults the viewer's moral comfort as well by means of the gawkers and paparazzi that camp out at the heroine's home and dog her steps to the very bitter end. Shaky ethical ground, perhaps, and it might even be moralistic one-upmanship to denounce the gawkers while giving us box seats for the spectacle of suffering they are clamoring to see. However, I think the film cannot simply be put down to a facile manipulation of bad conscience. The systematic refusal of any ethical ground from which to judge the characters or the film itself is at least an aesthetic achievement because the viewer is invited to consider his or her own enjoyment of the truly gripping performances. (Girardot out-Crawfords Crawford; Hardy Krüger's unflinching police inspector is the most chilling character on screen.)

I had heard of Director André Cayatte but never seen any of his films.

I have to say that I never expected a masterpiece of sheer honesty as I have watched in A CHACUN SON ENFER. The story is completely credible and there are times during the course of the movie when I felt that I was in among those characters. Dialogue is very realistic, character buildup too.

The ending is implacaby logical if far from pleasant.

The whole film is anchored in Annie Girardot's sublime performance - why she did not get an Oscar nomination for this film I will never know. Fernand Ledoux, as Girardot's father in law, is memorably cynical - more concerned with the ransom money than with the abduction victim. Bernard Fresson and, in particular, Stéphane Hillel, are also a class apart. On the downside, the police inspector played by Hardy Kruger seems a little bit too late on the scene, and too dettached, unemotional... and surplus.

Recommended viewing if you want to watch a credible piece of cinema and not some fly by night, pie in the sky formulaic piece of trash of the type that we all see more and more often these days. 9/10.