Il fascino del delitto

Jim Thompson wrote dark thrillers that were turned into some superb films (The Getaway-Peckinpah, 1972; Pop. 1280, as Coup de torchon-Tavernier, 1981; The Grifters-Frears, 1990). In 1979, Alain Corneau took A Hell of a Woman and made Serie noire, one of the most remarkable French crime films. The tone is very bleak, and there is a strong element of surrealistic humor. Georges Perec co wrote the script and he contributed many nonsense words and phrases to Frank Poupart's role

Frank is a small time salesman in a Paris industrial suburb who supplements his meager earnings by stealing from his boss, Staplin. The latter has Frank tossed in jail, whereupon Mona, the seventeen-year-old girl Frank's fallen for, pays Staplin to have Frank released. Mona's aunt, who has been prostituting the girl to the neighbourhood men, now becomes a tempting target for robbery.

Marie Trintignant has made five pictures with Corneau; she has a dark, brooding quality (big black eyes) that is perfectly suited to this story. She plays the part of guardian-angel-cum-slut wonderfully. Bernard Blier is Staplin, the oily, dishonest boss to a T. Andreas Katsulas has a ball with his character, a guy so dumb you don't know how he functions in this world. Patrick Dewaere, who was to kill himself only three years after making the film, is astonishing as Poupart. Just look at the desperation behind the cool exterior, the wild things he does--smashing his head against the hood of his car, or almost drowning in the bathtub. There is a savagery about his work that you don't find in other French actors.

IMDb synopsis says that Franck Poupart, played by Patrick Dewaere, is 'slightly neurotic'. It's actually much worse, Poupart is a complete maniac, left unsupervised in a jungle of HLM, terrains vagues, poverty and filth. He even readily mumbles to himself that he's psychotic.

I heard of Série noire when looking up Dewaere bio on wikipedia. It was mentioned how physically hard the filming was on the actors, and on Dewaere in particular. The characters keep fighting and shouting at each other, and they won't stop until they're completely exhausted or drunk. Except of course for Blier, who plays the soft spoken treacherous coward. I found this movie very close in spirit to Zola who would place weak personalities in a closed environment to sadistically observe what happens. Everyone is to blame for what happens, everyone is guilty.

This is a true chef d'œuvre, but a disturbing one, the kind of movie you'll be thinking of for days to come. It's all about madness, and you'll wonder how far you are from falling into it.

Unique, that's the only way to describe this movie that is absolutely impossible to put in any category...it has a very very special atmosphere, which I have never seen before. Patrick Dewaere is purely awesome, outstanding, one of his best roles, unforgettable, for this adaptation of a Jim Thompson's novel that I have never read. The opening scene, with Dewaere doing calisthenics with a very old fashioned and bizarre music, this scene announces and summarizes the whole movie. Not a drama, not a crime movie, not a comedy, simply something unique. Alain Corneau makes here something that looks like a Bertrand Blier's film. Everything, characters and situations, is sordid here, everything. It's a nasty losers story, emphasized by the settings and music.

This is the second Jim Thompson adaptation I review here and it's purely coincidental. I really must love Thompson's style. I wasn't expected a masterpiece when I bought Série Noire in DVD, tho. I've always been fond of the late Patrick Dewaere, I think he is one of the best French actors ever, and I like Corneau's cinema, but Série Noire was unexpected and it is indeed extraordinary. It's daring, tense and plunged into harsh realism. It's the kind of film that stays with you once you've finished watching it. It shows how easy it is to lose control when society becomes a weight on personal identity. Série Noire is a different kind of Film Noir and probably the best French crime film among Le cercle rouge and Du Rififi chez les hommes. It has a ton of black humor and a bleak atmosphere. Corneau shoots Paris as if it was itself a character, a gloomy, grey and ruthless antagonist. The sordid locations and the moisty dirty apartments where the action takes place give a really weird and nightmarish mood to the film. The social pressure which the character is subject is huge and unbearable; it literally toys with him until he breaks. Patrick Dewaere shines like in no other films, he's brilliant as the neurotic looser who gets wrapped into this tragic vortex after the killing of an old woman. His downfall somehow reminded me of the dizzying Richard Widmark's runaway in Night and the city. Georges Perec's dialogues are just great, very similar to Michel Audiard or Bertrand Blier's style. The cast is perfect. Bernard Blier is excellent as usual and Marie Trintignant is mysterious and sensual. If you like 70's French crime films, you have to watch it, this is one of the best.

I seem to be on something of an Alain Corneau binge, somewhat by accident. (These films were all recently added to kanopy...) Corneau is certainly not a one-trick pony, as his work spans an incredible range. This creation offers the ultimate noir de noir: super dark, bleak, depressing, yet somehow compelling at the same time. Quite well constructed and reminiscent in some ways of both the Coen brothers and Lina Wertmuller... I would not, however, characterize this film as a comedy. A bit too dark for that...