125 rue Montmartre

Lino Ventura is an ex-boxer who makes a living as a newsboy. People know him, they like him, he sleeps with Dora Doll occasionally. He sells his papers on the Pont D'Alma, then goes underneath to smoke a cigarette. Robert Hirsch throws himself into the Seine, and Ventura rescues him. Hirsch tells him an incoherent story about being a landowner, lured into a quick marriage with Andréa Parisy. Then the brother-in-law shows up and the two of them drive him mad. He fled to Paris, and tried to kill himself. Ventura is fed up with this after two days and takes him to his home, but refuses to go in. Ventura goes in and Mlle Parisy tells him her husband has tried to kill himself three times. There's no farm. She asks him to get her husband to come back. Ventura returns to Paris, and there Hirsch is, with proof of what he has said. Again, he takes Ventura to the house, telling him about 400,000 francs in a locked secretary desk, and where the key is. Again, Hirsch refuses to go in, so Ventura does, finds the money, only now there's a corpse in the salon, and police, whom Mlle Parisy identifies as her husband. The police arrest Ventura...

It's a well written and performed movie from director Gilles Grangier, a skilled commercial director. He keeps each sequence going long enough to begin to test the audience's patience, then moves on in an unexpected direction, thanks, no doubt, to the prize-winning policier by André Gillois it's derived from. Jean Desailly plays the canny detective well, and Ventura is excellent as a lug in this near-Hitchcockian movie.

The chemistry between Lino Ventura and Robert Hirsch is great to watch. A great movie.

The year 1959 in which Gilles Grangier's '125 rue Montmartre' was made was not an ordinary year in the history of French cinema. It was the year of the release of films like 'Les quatre cent coups' and 'Hiroshima mon amour', the first of a few consecutive years in which world cinema would be changed by a group of young directors and film theorists, followers of the concept of auteur cinema. Gilles Grangier was also in a period of maximum productivity. He had made the year before 'Le désordre et la nuit' and that year 'Archimède, le clochard', both with Jean Gabin in the leading roles. In '125 rue Montmartre' he casts Lino Ventura in the lead role. It is a thriller drama with a 'film noir' tone but also a moralizing story with dialogues written by Michel Audiard, adapting a novel by André Gillois. Grangier proves in this film that he masters and adopts many of the Nouvelle Vague techniques, but his directorial conception is completely opposite. He seems to be telling his young peers that movies are about and for viewers and are entertainment to take spectators out of the everyday, and not about the filmmakers or vehicles for engaging spectators with social or political messages.

The story takes place in 1959, in an era when printed newspapers were still the main means of information and the job of selling newspapers made it possible to earn a modest but decent living. Pascal is one such newspaper seller, every day he takes a stack of a hundred newspapers, rides his bicycle and sells them on the streets of Paris. After work, he smokes a cigarette on the banks of the Seine. On such a day he witnesses the suicide attempt of a man named Didier. He rescues him and takes him to his home. The man tells him about his wife trying to commit him to a mental asylum to get her hands on his fortune. Good soul, Pascal offers to help him, but this decision gets him into big trouble. The good deed will be punished with involvement in a burglary and being accused of a crime he did not commit.

Lino Ventura plays a role in this film that is a bit different from the kind of gangster or tough cop roles that audiences are used to in most of his other films. Pascal is a simple and gullible man who reacts violently when bad things happen to him, but who wouldn't react violently in his situation? The charm of this film also resides in the unexpectedly smooth melting of Pascal / Ventura in the surrounding human landscape, but also in the description of the human mosaic and life on the streets, in popular restaurants or at the distribution of newspapers, of a Paris of modest and working people. The contrast with the bourgeois house where dark intrigues and murders take place also has a social undertone, but this is implied and not emphasized. The Paris street and nocturnal scenes are no less interesting than those of the Nouvelle Vague contemporaries, and the sincerity of Ventura's performance is also fresh and natural. Even if Gilles Grangier belongs to a different directorial school, '125 rue Montmartre' is not that far from the revolutionary cinematographic works of 1959.

Andréa Parisy is worth watching this movie. She's extremely beautiful, in my opinion. She always reminded me of Maria Callas, and a little of Audrey Hepburn.

Well, what about the movie? I like French movies as well as I like Italian ones. So I definitely am prejudiced. This one here is rather OK, not sooo really good. The story is rather poor, at least from a 2023's point of view. A naive guy (Lino Ventura) is trying to help a pseudo-psycho who actually is the lover of the rich man's wife. She murders her husband to get all of his money. Old story. However, the pictures of Paris in the late 1950s are great. And the rich man's wife is a feast for the eyes. Andréa Parisy is definitely one of the most beautiful ladies ever.

Gilles Grangier was never looked upon as an auteur and a lot of his sixties movies are really bad.But the fifties display a more interesting choice of movies:Bertrand Tavernier, a famous FRench director and a very demanding critic, admires "le sang à la tête " , "gasoil" and "le désordre et la nuit",the latter being probably his best work.

"125 rue Montmartre" ,more a Boileau-Narcejac("Diabolique" )detective story style than a true film noir,is quite entertaining ,and ,given the stranglehold the nouvelle vague began to have on the French cinema,it's almost a breath of fresh air.Although by no means a nouvelle vague movie,by a long shot (there were detective films among the nouvelle vague movies,"ascenseur pour l'échaffaud" is a prominent example,"a bout de soufflé" is another one),it shares with the young Turks a shooting on location,in the streets of Paris,with its bistros,its newspaper sellers and even its large impressive houses.

The first part introduces the leads:Ventura is a newspaper seller, a loud-mouth who does not stop talking,particularly when he's eating;Hirsh is his contrary: a nervous man,on the verge of madness ,who seems to be in jeopardy.His wife,he says ,tries to drive him insane to latch on to his valuable properties.But are thing really what they seems? Pretty soon,Ventura realizes he's framed.There's a very good supporting cast including Jean Desailly as an astute cop,Andréa Parisy,Dora Doll,and Alfred Adam.

The climax of the movie remains the scenes in the circus where suddenly Grangier stops his narration to focus on a clown act which segues into an impressive ending,which could make any B movie director proud.