La nuit du carrefour

Georges Simenon once claimed to have written 60-80 pages a day and to have bedded 10,000 women. Should anyone deserve to be included in a list of famous Belgians then it is surely he!

His masterful novels with their psychological insights and ambivalent characters have enriched the world of film immeasurably and this surreal opus of Jean Renoir marks a first screen adaptation and the first personification of Jules Maigret in the form of Jean's brother Pierre.

By all accounts the author was none too pleased with the finished result but sufficiently impressed with Pierre's portrayal to hope that he would reprise the role in 'Un Tete d'un Homme' which was eventually played by the magnificent Harry Baur under Julien Duvivier's direction.

The somewhat convoluted plot here is of secondary importance to the all-pervading atmosphere of doom and gloom, heightened by exterior night shots shrouded in fog and mist with seemingly endless rainfall. The bizarre edits together with jumps and bumps in the narrative flow have been attributed to missing reels, lack of funds, Jean Renoir's excessive drinking or combinations thereof.

In spite of it all or perhaps because of it, this oddity remains both absorbing and entertaining. This is Pierre Renoir's first major film role and his Maigret is mainly required to hang around waiting for one of the crooks to make a mistake whilst exuding the air of menace that was to be so effective in this actor's later villainous roles. The most fascinating aspect of the piece is his ambivalent relationship with sluttish, cocaine-addicted Else played by the enigmatic Winna Winifried whose memorable performance provides an unique take on the 'femme fatale'.

Where does the film stand in this director's output? The quality of his films throughout the 1930's is unequalled and many of these have long since been regarded as timeless classics. This particular film, although influential in the development of Film Noir and a must for Renoir completists, remains, for this viewer at any rate, a relatively minor entry.

Although Jean Renoir is a highly acclaimed director, I found his "La Nuit Du Carrefour" to be creaky, dull, muddled, and slow-as-molasses. I had serious trouble following who is who except Maigret, and even Maigret himself seems to be fumbling most of the time. 1 very impressive minute of a POV car-chase cannot redeem the other 69. *1/2 out of 4.

I was surprised at how awkward, amateurish and even inept this early Renoir film was. Admittedly, there are moments of greatness where one sees the later master, particularly in some closer shots, where one can see fine, detailed, subtle acting. But for the most part of the film, this is a clumsily executed work of poor technical quality, and shaky narrative control. A sequence such as the night-time car chase is technically very brave for this period, but this doesn't excuse it for its poor realisation; one can be sure that Murnau would never have accepted such shoddy work. If one compares LA NUIT DU CARREFOUR with other films made in 1932, such as QUEEN CHRISTINA or GRAND HOTEL, one can see how inelegant and primitive this film's mise-en-scene is. I write this negative review merely to share with other people my disappointment; I travelled to see this film in a rare screening at London's NFT, but felt that I shouldn't have bothered.

At a small, outlying suburb of Paris that seems to be three houses, a butcher shop and a garage or two, a corpse is found in a car. It's a Jewish diamond merchant from the Low Countries. The police are soon sweating the owner of the garage, George Koudria. He is an exiled Swedish aristocrat who lives in one of the houses with his sister, Winna Winnifred. Enter Inspector Maigret in the person of Pierre Renoir, the brother of the movie's director, Jean Renoir. Koudria does not crack, and he is sent back to his home. He flees across the border, while Maigret wanders around, asking question that have nothing to do with the events, watching and listening.

Renoir (the director) made this film between LA CHIENNE and BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING. Those films would seem more typical of his movies, with this one an odd outlier, a potboiler to offer some income and prove he is a bankable film maker. I found it fairly typical of his works in which relationships are unclear and it is up to Renoir (the actor) to winkle them out for the audience. You may look on it as a try-out for THE RULES OF THE GAME with murder, and Simenon's name to add to the commercial value of the effort. It's a fine, atmospheric movie, if you ignore the simple matter of the mystery.

The problem I have with the mystery is that there is a perfectly good and simple explanation of who did it up to the point where Maigret begins to demonstrate his theory. Simenon and the Renoir brothers play fairly with the audience in this murder mystery, but the actual solution is far more complicated than the one offered early on. That the solution turns out to be the truth is a trick of the writer. Another solution could just as easily been written and Maigret could have produced the evidence equally easily, should Simenon and the director have wished it. In effect, they produce the clues after the audience has been given the complete story.

This is a wonderful early look on film based on a crime novel by Georges Simenon. The novel itself is uncharacteristically atmospheric and deliberately unfocused and this was handled beautifully by Jean Renoir with his fog-enshrouded sets and atmosphere. It is missing a reel, as I understand, but the novel itself has sufficient ambiguity to forgive any omission of that sort. The acting, with its melange of accents is fascinating in its own way. The visuals win the day. It's beautiful to look at, exotic and definitely a one-of-a-kind of its genre and hardly "inept".

Curtis Stotlar