L'aîné des Ferchaux

I saw this at London's National Film Theatre a couple of nights ago. The print, the best they could lay their hands on, was scratched and the colour had faded to the extent that much of it was a pinky sepia. Also, I could find very few reviews to read beforehand (zero on the IMDB). So I wasn't expecting much.

And I was therefore very pleasantly surprised. The tale of an old crooked banker who absconds to the US with a young male golddigger really works. Charles Vanel (who was so brilliant in The Wages of Fear) and Jean-Paul Belmondo are a wonderful team, as a very spiky and spiteful Father/Son relationship grows between them.

As a travelogue of a journey from New York to the Deep South it's fascinating, and reminded me, of all things, of Easy Rider, which I very much suspect it may have influenced.

There's a few problems with it, mainly due to the fact the Jean-Pierre Melville never really got the timing right when it came to editing emotional scenes (especially at the end).

But if you're a fan of the early Melville movies, Le Doulos in particular, then check it out.

"Magnet of Death" is a very unusual film from writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville. While the plot involves a crook, which is pretty typical of Melville, the plot itself is most unusual as the film is a meandering road picture--one with a scant plot and plenty of quiet moments.

When the story begins, Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is fighting his last boxing match. He just hasn't got what it takes and he needs to find a new job. He soon learns about an unusual job...being the traveling secretary and body guard for a rich man, Mr. Ferchaux. As for Ferchaux, he's a rich and well respected crook...a banker who soon is bound to be arrested for his many misdeeds. His plan is to skip the country and live out his life abroad...and so Michel has to be willing and able to travel with him.

The pair head to the United States because much of Ferchaux's ill-gotten wealth is in banks in America. The plan, then, is to collect his money and head to South America where there is no extradition treaty with France. However, this is all easier said than done....banks in America keep delaying him and a could FBI agents seem to be following the two men. Instead of being a gangster picture, which it seemed to be at first, it becomes a road picture...and a meandering one at that. It was as if Melville didn't have a script at times and the pair just aimlessly travel the roads of America as they head south.

While the film is an interesting character study, it also meanders too much. Overall, an odd sort of picture...and one I mildly enjoyed but nothing more.

Adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, Magnet of Doom (why it's called that I don't know, though the American DVD I watched had the title An Honorable Young Man) is about a young amateur boxer and ex-military man (Jean-Paul Belmondo, the cool tall smoking male of the Nouvelle Vague) who becomes a 'secretary' to an older white collar criminal (Charles Vanel) who had to leave France fast. Instead of going to Venezuela, like one might think is most logical, they head to America, first to New York and then, following a brief road trip, New Orleans.

This is where most of the story takes place - which is mostly just watching their relationship disintegrate and thoughts about taking-the-money-and-running for Belmondo (yeah, Vanel has a big stack of cash that he had to take out of his security box in New York before the feds got wise) - and it's not bad. If there's a problem it's that by the time one comes to this movie, which I didn't really know about until recently (it only got released on DVD last year I believe, and aside from a NY Film Festival screening fifty years ago it never got a release stateside), one has probably/likely seen all of Melville's other films. And it's not a major work.

Or, if it is, Melville doesn't really have a lot of energy to make it more than just an interesting B movie, no more no less. It is actually a "crime movie" if you think about it, just different because it's not about a heist or guys in trench-coats, but about an older man trying to out-run the law and... himself, I guess.

Belmondo and Vanel make up most of the heart of the picture and keep it fascinating. You want to know what each one will do next - Ferchaux needs Michel more than he needs him - amid the sweltering heat and the old man's boy-cry-wolf physical ailments. And Melville cast his two leads well. So well that it helps, a little, to distract from portions that don't work dramatically or feel dated. There's a mid-section in the film while they're on their cross-country trek that Michel stops (rather suddenly) for a female hitchhiker, and they quickly become lovers (?) in one of those Movie-Fantasy-Scenes where right after they pick her up they stop and Michel and the young woman have a swim and kiss and then... at the next stop she tries to run away with another truck driver (?)

It's something like that where Melville, whether it's through himself or Simenon's text, shows a bit of sexism, or just not knowing what to do with a female character that could have become a fully developed character or a love interest (and there IS a love interest, sorta, later in the movie in New Orleans, though I wonder if this is also an excuse to just show a woman practically naked while Michel sits drunk). It's not a criticism I'd like to make against the director but I do; he has his two main male characters fully developed, and the actors inhabit them well enough, that it disguises that everyone else in the movie has not much dimension at all. Well, maybe the bartender has a little as a mean-looking-dude of a sort.

But Melville's love of America comes through and that helps a bit. And it's interesting to see him work in color for the first time, though ironically I think I prefer when he has his more subtle, washed out and blue-ish colors in later movies like Army of Shadows and The Red Circle. Here things are bright enough (hard to tell fully from the non-Amamorphic DVD transfer), and he gets the local color about right even as it's all shot, oddly enough, in his studio in Paris (what, you thought he'd trek out to America to shoot this? Heavens no, though I'm sure a second unit for the rest of the footage).

An Honorable Young Man/Magnet of Doom has an intriguing performance from Belmondo, in terms of 'what will he do next', and some good cinematography. But there should've been a little more 'there' there, past the male camaraderie and themes of loyalty (which, yes, it's fine and well drawn enough).

Alternately called in English, "Magnet of Doom" or "An Honorable Young Man"--neither title doing justice to the French "L'Aîné des Ferchaux" (The Eldest of the Ferchaux Brothers), a phrase uttered in the film by Charles Vanel. Well, none of those titles is very good, but the film is pretty decent. Often seen as a detour in Jean-Pierre Melville's output, it does conform to a few of the director's themes. As a matter of fact, it could be seen as prefiguring the LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE (1966) in a number of ways. Vanel plays a corrupt financial partner who has to flee France ASAP--he's about to be arrested in connection with deaths of three men and is also in deep financial trouble. He hires a failed welterweight boxer--Jean-Paul Belmondo-- as a "secretary" to accompany him to the United States, where a safe deposit in his name will take care of his money problems. With a big wad of cash, the pair start off from NYC, heading south, ending up in New Orleans. Vanel is in charge all the time for the first half, but after Belmondo stops the car to pick up a female hitch hiker, he takes over, relegating Vanel to the back seat. Vanel's weaknesses become more evident as the situation becomes more and more hopeless: he's aging fast, has no real social support and his cash won't last forever. The film uses US back-roads and highways effectively and the New Orleans sequences have a noirish sense of decadence and doom. As the relationship between the two men devolves quickly into contentiousness, it's pretty seedy and unpleasant, but Melville's energetic direction--never a dull scene--should keep anyone interested. Both Vanel and the ever-watchable Belmondo are in good form and keep it all very convincing. Not one of Melville's masterworks, but a must-see for his fans.

And not a crime film, as also was L'ARMEE DES OMBRES, this Jean Pierre Melville's movie is an absolute gem, about a loser, Belmondo, to whom his fate permits him to get another chance to achieve his goals. A very American film scheme, but the plot itself is quite different then. Belmondo is as powerful here as he was in Melville's LE DOULOS, two years earlier. It is not a crime film, but a drama, exceptional drama, very bitter, sad, with an unique atmosphere. The jewel, the best of this movie is of course the face to face between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Charles Vanel; two generations meet. This is a tremendous films which obvious skills announce the further Melville's masterpieces.