Os Fantasmas do Chapeleiro

A hatter in a provincial town (Michel Serrault) leads the life of a respectable citizen but is in fact a serial murderer. The only person to suspect this is his neighbour the tailor (Charles Asnavour). It is difficult to believe that this film was made in the eighties as not only is the film set in the fifties but it has a totally fifties style production. It seems to be exactly the kind of film that Chabrol and the other members of the nouvelle vague were rebelling against. The story is very straightforward, the characters are stereotypes, the female characters are two dimensional and treated as objects. "Le Boucher" made years earlier is far more modern and superior in every way. The story is well told if you suspend your disbelief and the acting on the whole is good. The town in which it is set is very photogenic, with narrow cobbled streets and no traffic. Not only does it compare badly to other Chabrol films but also to other Simenon adaptations. "Monsieur Hire" has a similarly paced and straightforward story line but is more adventurous in visual style and tells a more modern story with two more believable characters. "Le Horloger de Saint-Paul" has almost a documentary style and requires a lot of thought as the development is to do with the main character rather than the storyline, and is far superior.

The plotting of "Chapelier" is actually quite dull, I must admit. But nevertheless the movie is a great piece of entertainment. The one person that makes it worth your while is Michel Serrault. He ranges among the finest actors that France brought to the screen. Here, he simply plays a total nuthead, which is absolutely entertaining to look at. Should you ever come across this movie on TV, watch it!

In this film, Claude Chabrol seems to sum up his mastery of the art with a slickly made, macabre, ironic crime story full of Hitchcock elements and top performances by Serrault and Aznavour.

It was out of sheer coincidence that this viewing followed those of Chabrol's JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL (1971) and THE BREACH (1970) since it has thematic similarities with the former, while adopting an incongruously stylized approach as the latter!

In fact, we have here a strangling (which, however, is a flashback this time around and occurs towards the end rather than at the very start) that is almost a replica of the one in JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL. Similarly, the culprit is depicted as being unable to find peace of mind (and, in this case, stop his crime spree) until he is apprehended! With this in mind, the "Cult Filmz" website (where THE HATTER'S GHOST was given a similar rating as mine) bemoans the unsatisfying ending but, as for myself, I was not bothered by its ordinariness (this is, after all, essentially a low-key affair).

Incidentally, Leonard Maltin – who unjustly lambasts the film and awards it a measly *1/2 – may have been baffled by the seemingly deliberate heavy-handedness at work and, consequently, took Michel Serrault's performance in particular to be absurdly overstated. He is literally a "Mad Hatter", thus providing a link to yet another of the director's earlier efforts i.e. ALICE OR THE LAST ESCAPADE (1977). Indeed, as with the afore-mentioned (and intrinsically histrionic) THE BREACH, this could well be deemed a parody Chabrol movie if it were not so compelling (based on a novel by Georges Simenon) and obviously accomplished!

In the long run, THE HATTER'S GHOST emerges to be one of the most purely Hitchcockian works by France's own "Master Of Suspense", with definite nods to PSYCHO (1960) and FRENZY (1972) but also featuring a STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)-like complicity between the film's two leads. The other protagonist is Charles Aznavour – no less impressive than Serrault, despite having far less screen-time – as the mousy Armenian tailor who constantly shadows the hatter, even witnessing one of his murders, but is too afraid to report him and, owing to his own frail health, eventually dies. Also in the cast are a young Francois Cluzet as a reporter who not only follows the case but is periodically contacted via taunting letters by the strangler, THE BREACH's Mario David as the clueless Chief of Police and Aurore Clement as an attractive woman all the menfolk lust after but who is clearly fated to cross paths with the killer eventually.

In the small La Rochelle town, Léon Labbé (Michel Serrault) is a reputable hatter that lives with his crippled wife Mathilde (Monique Chaumette) and his maid Louise Chapus (Christine Paolini) on the upper floors of his store. The boy Valentin (Fabrice Ploquin) works for him at the store. His neighbor across the street is the Armenian tailor Kachoudas (Charles Aznavour), who lives with his wife and five children in the upper floors of his store. La Rochelle is shaken by a strangler that has already killed six women in the last weeks. Léon like to play card with his friends in a bar and is always followed by Kachoudas that suspects he might be the killer. Among his friends are the Chief of Police Caille (Robert Party), Dr. Chaudreau (Victor Garrivier) and the young journalist Jeantet (François Cluzet), who has theories about the strangler. Soon we learn that Léon killed his wife two months ago and begin the crime spree killing her six best friends that usually visit her on her birthday. There is only the seventh woman missing, but he finds that she died of natural causes. Now the sick Léon looks for a replacement and Louise may be his next victim.

"Les fantômes du chapelier" is an original French movie by Claude Chabrol, with a suspenseful story of an insane hatter respected by his community that is a strangler. The cast is impressively great, with names such as Michel Serrault, Charles Aznavour and François Cluzet, among others, and the screenplay keeps the attention of the viewer until the last scene. The plot is timeless and has not aged after more than forty years. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Fantasmas do Chapeleiro" ("The Ghosts of the Hatter")