Assassinato em 45 R.P.M.

When Boileau-Narcejac heard that Hitchcock wanted to transfer "celle qui n'était plus" (" Diabolique") to the screen,they made a lot of books on the same pattern:the dead might not be dead.It gave a masterpiece "Vertigo" (title of the book:"d'entre les morts" (=from the dead))and "a coeur perdu" which Etienne Perier transferred to the screen as "Meurtre en 45 tours" .

Darrieux's husband was killed in a car crash (accident? murder?)and did he really die?.The lady and her lover (Auclair) receive 45pm records ,with the dead's voice which threatens them "I'll come back...I'll come back".Pictures and photographs of the hubby which appear now and then are quite disturbing.

Actually this is one of the weakest Boileau-Narcejac's stories.You'll guess the culprit's name before the end .Add some very bland songs (Darrieux plays the part of a Chanteuse) and a captain not unlike Charles Vanel's in " Diabolique".

Etienne périer would continue in the detective film with such works as "la main à couper" or "Un Meurtre est un Meurtre".None of those works are particularly memorable.

Sumptuous house, great photography, beautiful Darrieux singing: MEURTRE EN 45 TOURS kicks off nicely... and it stays that way until Darrieux's caddish hubby, superbly played by the great character actor, Jean Servais, dies in an accident.

Then things begin to go down the tubes: Darrieux is asked to confirm that it is her hubby who's lying in the body bag, but she appears to look away as she approaches it, and later confirms to boytoy Auclair that she did not actually look.

From that point on, the nonsensical script simply loses all connection with logic and believability.

Uninspired direction by Etienne Périer, substandard performance from second lead Michel Auclair.

Most probably this movie tried to capitalized on the fantastic success of Les Diaboliques. From the same Boileau-Narcejac team of detective stories this one unfortunately does not work as it should. Except for Jean Servais at his cynical best, the cast is not convincing and the action drags through the usual twists of the suspense scenario.

Here is another underrated French film noir. With a plot inspired by French dynamic duo Boileau-Narcejac's (Les Diaboliques, Les Louves) novel "A coeur perdu", the story focuses on Eve (Danielle Darrieux), whose husband Maurice Faugères (Jean Servais) is said to have been killed in a car accident. The widow and her lover Jean (Michel Auclair), who both wished for Maurice's death just before the accident so they could live their love together, quickly fall into turmoil as Eve starts receiving vinyls with her dead husband voice saying that he will be back soon... Plot twists are numerous and the viewer gets played often during the movie, just like the widow and her lover do. Photography by Marcel Weiss is on point and really captures the state of fear the two protagonists go through. A minor but solid French noir.

This French noir is a B film similar to the American ones of the period, although France is not a country we normally associate with B pictures. It was the second feature film directed by the bilingual Belgian director, Etienne Périer. Périer is best known for two English language blockbusters which he directed in 1971: WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL and ZEPPELIN, both of which were hits at the time. Ten years earlier, in 1961, he directed BRIDGE TO THE SUN with Carroll Baker, set in Japan. He was thus equally at home with French language and English language films. This French film is available on DVD in a dubbed version, and no subtitled version appears to exist. The film is chiefly of interest because it stars Danielle Darrieux. The story of the film is based upon the novel A COEUR PERDU jointly written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who made film history as the authors of the novel filmed by Alfred Hitchcock three years earlier as VERTIGO (1958). This film was remade in 1994 under the title MEURTRE EN MUSIQUE (MURDER BY MUSIC), by the French Canadian director Gabriel Pelletier. The story involves the unhappy marriage of Darrieux to an egotistical husband played by Jean Servais, and her affair with a young pianist. (Darrieux is a popular singer and her husband composes the songs.) The husband is jealous and plots entrapments and revenge, but then is apparently killed in a car crash. However, he then comes back to life and starts claiming in 45 rpm sound recordings that he faked his death and is watching Darrieux's ever move. Everything becomes very complex, especially as the husband had a business partner with shady motives. All of the people in the story are rather unpleasant, one has no sympathy for any of them, and the story is therefore unrewarding because who cares what happens to any of them anyway, But nevertheless, for those interested in the noir genre, I would say that this French film of 1960 is a conscious attempt by the French to imitate the postwar American noir films, and it partially succeeds in doing so. For people interested in the history of the cinema, that is reason enough to be aware of it or even to watch the film.