Assassino de Mulheres

Among the less famous movies made by Gabin in his 50s,there are two I love most:Maigret Lays a Trap and The Baron of the Locks;the two have 4 things in common:Gabin,Delannoy,a Simenon adaptation,and Desailly in a supporting role.Maigret Lays a Trap serves also as an access,an introduction to the young Mrs. Girardot's charm and womanhood.

Gabin seems in high spirits and very willing to act and to mold a splendor of an ample role:that of a mammoth police inspector.

The atmosphere is very adequate and fitting.The pace is good,alert,nimbly done.This movie is concise,sharp,practical,each actor is cut out for the part.

Mrs. Girardot was fresh,appetizing,lustful and extremely sexual,she shows finesse and goes far.(Delannoy tasted the womanhood and knew how to make such portraits of women:in The Baron of the Locks,there is the delicious Blanchette Brunoy.It is obvious he had a taste for portraying women.)

"Maigret ..." takes pride in its quartet of actors:Gabin,Mrs. Girardot,Desailly (the director Delannoy would use Desailly again in another Simenon adaptation featuring Gabin:"The Baron of the Locks ") and Ventura in a bit,unimportant part.Hussenot is interesting as "Lagrume". Desailly plays an adipose,slippery, faint-hearted youngster with a psychotic air,a queer customer. Mrs. Girardot is very noticeable and lucent, lurid, luminous.

Maigret tend Un Piège (1958) is the first of the Gabin's "Maigrets",and a relish.Gabin was 54 years when he made this role.Gabin should have made many more such "Maigret" movies,and less trucker roles.The crime movies were seldom honored with an acting so classy.

Jean Delannoy was a very competent,efficient,very pragmatic, intelligent, capable director,and he made some very pleasing Simenon adaptations with Gabin.Delannoy showed up to be a clear-sighted director.(Contrary to what is said by a few,Gabin worked with many good directors,such as Renoir ,Carné,Duvivier,Ophuls,Becker,some of them now despised by nerds.)

I don't seek the Gabin's "Maigrets" for the joys only Simenon's novels can offer;the flicks provide joys of their own.The novels' Maigret is a very different one;Gabin's is tough,brusque,authoritarian,sometimes irascible,gives everybody the ha-ha.This movies are on their own.

Maigret was one of the best Gabin roles,and it is fair that all 3 "Maigret" movies are included in the list of Gabin's 17 "Incontournables". Gabin made one of the best policemen in cinema's history.

This year was devoted to deepening my appreciation of Simenon's works; this is the best film version of his novels. From the first scene, with a nervous Insp. Lagrume trying to keep abreast of a violent confrontation in the Place des Vosges--the fourth killing by a sadistic serial killer--to the ending with Lagrume again trying to curry favour with an exasperated Maigret, this film held me spellbound. The acting is superb: Gabin has his best role since the glory days with Renoir in the 30's, Desailly is extraordinary as the wretched Maurin, pulled by mother and wife both and hating it, Annie Girardot is wonderfully sensual and determined as the young wife, and Lucienne Bogaert plays the mother from Hell with the greatest skill. The hatred the two women have for each other is palpable. All the supporting players turn in fine work, especially Gerard Sety as Jojo the gigolo who manages to stir the emotions of Yvonne Maurin, for a while at least.

It seems there is no general Region 1 release for this film; that's a real shame. I found a cheap knockoff without special features in a cutout bin in Montreal. Please let's have a proper reissue.

Alongside Molinaro's "La Mort de Belle", the best adaptation of a Simenon story for the big screen.

Helmer Delannoy proves a past master at creating a stifling atmosphere ( night scenes, a hot stormy weather, a heady melody pervading the story ), managing to make the tension rise and swell regularly until it explodes in a triple climax ( Maurice's interrogation, the confrontation of Maurice's wife and mother, the final attempt to murder Mauricette ). So, when the rain finally starts falling in the final seconds of the movie, it does as much good to bulky, weary Gabin as it does to the tense viewer.

Of course, the film benefits from a great interpretation : Jean Gabin gives life to his determined-shrewd-exhausted "commissaire" while Jean Desailly shines as the poor but dangerous Maurice whose boyhood has been prolonged by the misguided love of his mother ( Lucienne Bogaërt, perfect ). And Annie Girardot plays subtly and with welcome restraint the loving wife of a monster.

Sure, Misraki's music and song are haunting and the camera-work is sleek, but what actually makes this film a major work is that the authors( R.M.Arlaud, Delannoy and Audiard ) are true to the spirit of Simenon : disillusioned with human nature but sympathetic with those who are its victims, however monstrous they may appear to society.

Despite his occasional appearance in the films of major directors like Max Ophuls, Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir, from the 1950s onwards Jean Gabin seemed content to rely simply on his effortlessly charismatic screen persona and elevate an apparently interminable succession of old-fashioned potboilers which, while undeniably enjoyable in themselves, now seem like a regrettable waste of this monumental French film star. Nevertheless, I try not to miss any of his films when they crop up on Italian or French Cable TV channels and, for what it's worth, I've always been on the look-out for at least two of his late 50s films - Claude Autant-Lara's LOVE IS MY PROFESSION (1958; with Brigitte Bardot) and the film under review here.

Anyway, Gabin is perfectly cast as the world-weary Police Inspector who is pondering retirement when the re-emergence of an old nemesis - a serial-killer who stabs lonely brunettes coming home late at night - taunts him back into action with a supremely clever plan to trap the killer, hence the film's title. The film also features in a supporting role the actor who, for all intents and purposes, replaced Gabin in French filmgoers' minds as the brooding action hero, Lino Ventura, but it's Annie Girardot (as a neglected but ultimately self-sacrificing wife) and Jean Desailly (as her impotent, mother-fixated artist husband) who leave the best impression in the crowded supporting cast.

Jean Gabin would go on to appear as Inspector Maigret in 2 subsequent films - MAIGRET ET L' AFFAIRE SAINT-FIACRE (1959; which I've caught up with a couple of years ago) and MAIGRET VOIS ROUGE (1963) - and work a further 5 times with director Delannoy (including the afore-mentioned second Maigret film); interestingly enough, Delannoy himself would abandon his own artistic aspirations shown earlier in two major French films of the 1940s - L'ETERNEL RETOUR (1943) and LA SYMPHONIE PASTORALE (1946) - to concentrate on modest genre offerings (of which MAIGRET SETS A TRAP is the best-known and probably best overall as well) for the rest of his career.

Inspector Maigret is celebrated French pulp writer Georges Simenon's most famous literary creation and had previously been portrayed on the screen by Pierre Renoir in one of his brother Jean's most elusive films, NIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS (1932), and also by the great Charles Laughton in Burgess Meredith's intriguing directorial outing, THE MAN IN THE EIFFEL TOWER (1950) - neither of which I've watched alas - and would go on to be impersonated by a variety of formidable character actors among them Rupert Davies, Gino Cervi and Michael Gambon for TV!

I delight in a good detective story and have seen numerous Film & TV versions of the same stories. In this case we're speaking of cases, which are for me; fantastic versions of Maigret. Gabin plays the character in such a vibrantly nuanced manner, as that of a man who is measured, but very engaged in walking the streets and getting into the nitty gritty of each case. The relationship with his wife has less to do with smiles and more to do with a woman who bursts any notional bubble he's caught in, with unpretentious aplomb. And the cases themselves are so much more detailed, complex and true to Simenon's originals than some other adaptations; especially shorter length episodes for TV. Of course, Simenon himself preferred Rupert Davies portrayal over the dozen or so other attempts. But for me this was thoroughly enjoyable!