Ombre sui muri

The story of orphan Seraphime Monge returning to his home village after World War I to discover that the history of his family is soaked in blood and that in order to find redemption and break the spell he must revenge the death of his parents is quite interesting. It comes on the line of classic French novels like these of Alexandre Dumas, with 'justiciers' taking revenge over generations. Unfortunately the cinema making of this film is not up to the story, the director seems undecided whether to make a horror Edgar Alan Poe type of story or rather a romantic Alexandre Dumas epic. Despite some fair acting the movie never takes off, scenes that had a lot of dramatic potential are missed, and the usage of off-screen dialog spoils the whole first half of the film, just to be completely forgotten in the second one. I read on IMDb that the film was quire successful in the 80s, to be completely forgotten a few years later and unfortunately this is quite justified.

Georges Lautner, like Edouard Molinaro and Gérard Oury, began his career in atmospheric noir movies, then turned to classic cult comedies. After a great number of these cult comedies, nearly at the end of his career, Lautner in 1988 directed this forgotten "la Maison assassinée", very atmospheric come back of a young soldier from WWI whose family has been slaughtered in a small mountain village. It's gripping from the very beginning and climax increases till the end. It's a dark stories full of hate and non stop murders and mystery. The casting is incredible from Patrick Bruel (yes) to an old woman (Maria Meriko) and the fabulous three young beauties of the village (divine Anne Brochet, sensual Ingrid Held, sweet Agnès Blanchot) and all the others. The entire movie is well done, there isn't any bad scene, and there are some exciting and successive strong murder sequences. Should be a real cult Lautner movie.

This film's title is somewhat misleading when translated into English. Some have mis-translated it literally as THE ASSASSINATED HOUSE, which means nothing. It really should be translated as THE MURDERED HOUSEHOLD. The film, based on a disturbing novel by the well-known Provencal author Pierre Magnan, begins in 1896 in Haute Provence, in the South of France. It is late at night and the Monge family are in a strange and brooding mood in their isolated old stone farmhouse. Suddenly a stranger comes to the door and asks for shelter for the night (a common custom in the rural South of France in those days), and sits down to eat some soup which the wife of the household gives to him. Strange events follow, of a horrifying nature, which we do not fully witness. It is not entirely clear what really happened, but by the morning only a baby in a cradle is left alive. Then we have the film credits. The main film really begins in the year 1920, when the baby of the story has grown up and survived fighting as a soldier in the First World War. Named Seraphin Monge, he finally returns to his home village where he had not been since he was an infant. He knows nothing of the murder of his family, only that he is an orphan. He claims the old family house, which has been deserted since the murders, and is given a sum of money from the sale of the surrounding farmland years before. Then it is that the strange events begin again. What follows is so complex that it defies summary. No, there is nothing supernatural about any of it. But what we learn, as layer by layer of the village onion is peeled away, is a great deal about the depths of human nature, most of it bad. This is also a quintessential Provencal drama of passion and perversity, well up to the standards of the Marcel Pagnol tales JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DES SOURCES (both 1986), which swept the English-speaking world in the late eighties and were talked about for so many years following, leading to a mass migration of the British to settle in Provence. The leading role of Seraphin is played by Patrick Bruel, who adopts a very mild and puzzled manner, as he gradually comes to realize that his parents have apparently been murdered in cold blood by three vicious villagers, all of whose daughters coincidentally now fall for Seraphin. He thus comes to know all their fathers and plots their murders as revenge. But Fate is not to allow it, for someone else seems to be involved, so that Seraphin is continually thwarted, and events take their own course. The three girls who fancy Seraphin (most other young men having been killed in the War, so that he has a novelty value of being a handsome young man who is still alive) are played by three ravishing beauties: Anne Brochet, Agnes Blanchot, and Ingrid Held (a mysterious beauty who made 16 films and then dropped out of the film business in 1992 to become an art historian; nothing further seems to be known about her, even whether she is still alive). Of these, Anne Brochet (whose surname means 'pike' as in fish) is one of my favourite French actresses. Probably her greatest film role was as the daughter of Saint-Coulombe in TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE (1991), a film entirely about my favourite musical instrument, the viola da gamba (known in ye olde England simply as 'the viol'). She also made a fascinating film entitled in English I MARRIED A DEAD MAN, which I cannot find listed in her credits under any title. One of my favourite jokes I tell to myself (for who else would listen to such nonsense?) is to call Rosamund Pike by the name of Rosamonde Brochet, and to call Anne Brochet instead Annie Pike, which coincidentally was the name of my mother's best friend as a girl. (Well, one has to amuse oneself somehow.) This film is another of the masterpieces of that great French director, Georges Lautner. See my recent review of his thriller masterpiece, MORT D'UN POURRI (DEATH OF A CORRUPT MAN, 1977). The twists and turns of the plot of this film are so ingenious that even someone who can do the Rubik Cube in ten seconds would have trouble working them out in advance. This film has been reissued with English subtitles on Blu-Ray with interviews with Lautner and Bruel (no subtitles for those). This is another one of those 'if yuh ain't seen it yuh ain't lived' films. But hold on to your seat, as it is what is called 'a journey'. The supporting performances are also so good that one forgets they are not real villagers, who at any moment might reveal to us our own secrets.

George Lautner ,a very prolific director has produced mediocre films by the dozen.And however,there are three works ,in his monumental filmography,which indicates that he could have been so much more.

In 1963,"le septième juré" a film noir which is on a par with the best Clouzot and Duvivier.

In 1970,"la route de Salina" , a weird story of madness,one of Rita Hayworth 's last parts.

In 1988,this "maison assassinée" which ranks among the best French films of the decade.It remained ignored I hope that some day people will give it the place it deserves.

"La maison assassinée" came aside as a shock in the eighties:they did not make movies like this one any longer.It is return to the nineties melodrama -because we're closer to black melo than to thriller- which was thriving at the turn of the century with Xavier de Montépin("la porteuse de pain" ) or Adolphe D'Ennery ("les deux orphelines " which became Griffith's "orphans in the storm").But inside melodramatic elements,we 've got to notice the strong presence of the murder mystery à la Maurice Leblanc (and his hero Arsène Lupin).And this kind of rural detective melodrama ,this is what Jacques Becker (his masterpiece "Goupi Mains Rouges" ) or Christian-Jacques ("l'assassinat du père noël" did in their time ,but it was forty years before Lautner. Jean Becker ,(Jacques's son) tackled the genre but his movie ("l'été meurtrier",1982) suffered from a weak screenplay.

"La maison assassinée can boast a very strong screenplay.Adapted from a contemporary writer ,the story will grab you till the end.

So much for the prelims:in the darkest night, a man asks for refuge in a remote house ;outside three masked men are waiting :are they murderers?

A whole family is slain,and the only survivor(Bruel),twenty years later,comes back from WW1,to be confronted with the inhabitants of the village's hostility:they say he brings bad luck .He becomes an outcast.But he won't give up:he wants to know what happened to his parents and to avenge them.

The post-WW1 atmosphere is wonderfully recreated with his women left alone during the war,its draft dodgers who used to work behind a desk (the judge in the scene with Yann Colette,who was disfigured),its girls in search of a husband ,because of the dearth of young men.

THere's everything in this far-fetched by absorbing story: bewitchment complete with needles and dolls ,a castle with ferocious dogs , an old woman who resembles a witch (a remarkable Maria Meriko),and strange death that happens without the hero's intervention.Who is working behind the scenes?Everything revolves around the number three: three masked marauders,three letters,three girls who moves around the hero, three places (the village,the doomed house and the castle)..

This movie was far from the routine of the dull French cinema from the eighties.Add a marvelous cinematography which enhances the splendid rural landscapes and you wonder why Georges Lautner did not make more movies like this one.

Intriguing and intense French noir crime and mystery drama based on the 1984 novel of the same name written by Pierre Magnan, who also co-wrote the film's screenplay.

The story is based on the life of an orphaned World War I soldier, who arrives in a small village where he will come across many unexpected revelations.

Simple but quality production, with great interpretations and solid direction. Excellent script, with firm hands from the author of the original book behind the good work.

I saw this movie at the theaters when I was 20 years old and at the time I loved it, it was etched in my memory. I never had the opportunity to watch it again, it may be that nowadays it looks in a different form, but I am absolutely sure that it is still a good film for anyone who wants to see good European cinema from the 80s.